How To Overcome Homosexual OCD | Intrusive Thoughts

How To Overcome Homosexual OCD | Intrusive Thoughts

https://www.restoredminds.com/5-Rules-For-Recovery

In this episode, I discuss Homosexual OCD or Sexual Orientation OCD. HOCD is when a person experiences intrusive thoughts and doubt or uncertainty regarding their sexual orientation. This will lead to various compulsions that include analyzing levels of arousal in various situations and avoid situations that may cause the person to feel nervous or uncertain.

TRANSCRIPT

00:04 All right. Hey guys, and welcome to a, another episode where we are going to talk about sexual orientation, OCD. Sometimes this is known as homosexual OCD, sometimes it's known as gay OCD, or you could even dare I say, call it straight OCD. And I'll explain that in a little bit because basically, um, this in this episode I want to talk about a subset of OCD where people analyze and obsess about their sexual orientation and it develops into an OCD cycle. And so again, this continues our series on intrusive thoughts. And so in the first section we covered those, um, you know, kind of intrusive thoughts around religion, then we moved into harm and now we're kind of covering the third, um, section which are revolve around sexuality. And so in the last episode we talked about relationship OCD and I have a link down below in case you missed that.

00:54 Um, but this, um, with, with sexual orientation OCD, I find that this often kind of goes hand in hand with relationship OCD. So let's go ahead and start off by talking about just kind of what this is. So when someone's dealing with sexual orientation, OCT or homosexual OCD, what's happening is, is that this person is locked on to this need to know, um, for what their sexual orientation is. Okay. Now, in almost every case of this, again, this is not a sexuality issue, right? And, and that's kind of, you know, the common theme that I've been talking about in this series where OCD is going to tell you that the issue is this. And then people obsess about the content of the OCD where as opposed to realizing that it's an OCD issue in the first place, right? So with religious OCD, it's not a am I going to go to hell issue or not?

01:47 It's an OCD problem. And what's happening is there's this faulty alarm system going off in the brain and it's telling you that this is the problem. And so people take it at face value. And that's essentially what's happening with sexuality, with sexuality, with city or, um, sexual orientation. OCD is that the OCD is latched on the idea of, you know, we need to know, we need to know what our sexual orientation is. And then it arouses doubt in the person, um, about, you know, whatever the theme is. So for instance, you know, a person who has almost always, you know, had, um, relationships with people of the opposite sex, what will happen is they'll have a thought enter their head one day that, Oh, you know, well, what if I turn gay? Or what if I found that person attractive and they're, you know, a person of the same sex.

02:35 And what will happen is, is that anxiety will spike and then they'll analyze and feel like they need to know, you know, if they are or aren't homosexual. Now the thing is, is this can take on various forms and, and like I was saying when I call it, you know, straight OCD, I know I'm a, you know, another YouTube person by the name of Mark Freeman. You know, uh, it made a video on that and I thought it was really good. So a little shout out there. Um, but what happens is, is that, you know, I've, I've worked with people who are straight that are worried that they might be gay. I've also worked with people who are, who identify as gay and are worried that they may turn straight or may be straight. Right? And that's why when we look at this issue, we have to realize that it's not a sexuality problem.

03:21 Right. And you know, [inaudible] and, um, so that's kind of when I talk about, you know, what it is, you know, just understanding that it's this obsessing and ruminating and analyzing this need to know and need to be certain about one sexual orientation. And what happens is it takes on the same four characteristics of obsessions, anxiety, compulsions, relief, and just builds and builds and builds and builds. And the more and more they try to figure the answer out, the worse and worse the problem becomes. So let's talk about now that we know kind of what it is, let's talk about some kind of common things that you'll see in people with sexual orientation. OCD. So someone with sexual orientation, OCT, what they'll do is they will, they will analyze a mini events, right? So then this, this is, um, kind of a, they, they might analyze how they feel.

04:10 Um, when they stand around people of the same sex, they might analyze how they feel in certain movie scenes, whether they see a movie and it has, you know, a homosexual scene or something like that. They'll analyze how they're, if they're aroused by that scene, you know, they'll just kind of play it again and again in their head. And then, um, and also, um, they'll spend a lot of time, you know, um, analyzing their relationships, analyzing their past, you know, whether or not when they, you know, gave their friend to high five, you know, was did they want to hold hands? You know, it's like, it will just take on so many different forms. Right? And so a lot of analyzing is what you'll see with people who struggle with this form of OCD. Now, some common, um, compulsion's right, which we of course need to understand are things like avoidance, right?

04:57 Avoidance is a really big compulsion with this subset of OCD because people will avoid maybe going into locker rooms or they'll avoid, you know, using the bathroom around other, um, other men or women, right. Or they will avoid dating in many cases. And this is one of the hard parts about this particular form of OCD because obviously it involves sex. Um, they might avoid being sexually intimate with their partner or avoid dating and you know, sex altogether because they just are, you know, their OCD is telling them that they need to have this answer before they engage in X or Y. Right. And the problem is, is that, you know what, what the OCD does is it takes this idea of attraction and again manifested into that OCD lens that I talk about. And so they'll sit there and analyze if they're attracted to a person of the same sex, not realizing that it's completely normal to look at someone and evaluate whether they're attractive or not.

05:56 Right. And that's very different than, you know, often than being sexually attracted to something. Right. And so they make this idea of, Oh, well I, I think that, you know, other guy looks good or he's handsome or whatever, or you know, if it's a female, I think she's pretty. And what happens is, is the OCD then takes it and runs with it and says, Oh, well you see, you thought so there's evidence that you know, you might be gay or that, you know, you might be straight or whatever. Right. And it kind of runs with that a theme. And so basically when we're talking about this and realizing that the compulsion's are, are usually very mental, right. And it also is avoidance and they're also do reassurance seeking. So they may watch, you know, um, they may look at attractive women and be like, okay, can you all good?

06:42 I, I was attracted to her. That's good. Right? Or, you know, a lot of times people will look at pornography, things like that to reassure themselves that they are attracted. But oftentimes by doing that, they analyze their level of arousal and because they don't have the experience or the arousal that they think they should have, it then causes a trigger, right? So it becomes a very big cycle sometimes with people with sexual orientation and it gets very muddy, right? And that's why when we, when we look at this, what we need to realize is that it's an OCD problem, right? And in order that we treat it like an OCD problem, so with a treatment of, of sexual orientation, OCD is the same as any other form of OCD. And it comes down to exposure and response prevention, right? Um, because what we're looking for is to habituate to the, the alarm triggers that the brain is producing at this certain content, right?

07:33 It's not the content that actually is the problem. It's the alarm system. That's actually the problem, right? So we want to habituate to the alarm system to ultimately allow it to drop, right? And so, um, as we do ERP, one of the things that we do is we kind of take the initial triggers, right? Whether the thoughts and um, you know, we expose ourself to the, the thoughts themselves, but then we also will do, you know, a lot of physical things, right? So if you avoid certain places, that means going those places, right? So go to going to locker rooms sometimes as far as, you know, going to gay bars even and you know, and talking to, you know, obviously people of the same sex or people that, you know, you may find attractive that you know, and so, and really putting yourself in those situations, right?

08:17 That's what the exposure is. And then preventing you from actually doing the avoidance compulsions or any of the other compulsion's that you do, the analyzing, the ruminating and, um, the more and more we can expose ourself to the feared situation and prevent ourselves from doing anything that's reinforcing that fear, what happens is, is that there's a natural habituation process that takes place, things ID levels drop, and you're able to see the thoughts and to see the whole concept of your sexuality and much more clarity than through the lens of that fear. And, um, you know, the OCD. So hopefully that makes sense. You know, again, um, in this episode we've kind of covered what sexual orientation OCD is or a gay OCT or homosexual ISTI. And then we've talked about kind of some common symptomology as well as common compulsions and then what, uh, you know, kind of an overview of what treatment looks like.

09:12 Right? It really is about identifying those compulsions, removing them right and both on mental and physical level, right? And then allowing that habituation process take place. So if you found this episode helpful, um, you know, we have more resources available available for you [email protected]. Um, we have some links down below to lead you to some direct free resources, assessments, things like that. And again, we always, um, appreciate if you would subscribe and like, and follow us on social, um, to support our channels because I'm, you know, just to help us get this information out to people that, um, will find a helpful. And hopefully, as you know, more and more, it gets out to people. Um, you know, more and more people able to get help and, uh, to ultimately create a, a, a better world and better society with people, um, die developing better mental health for everyone. So thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us today and, uh, we really appreciate it. And, um, yeah, we'll see you next week as we continue on this series on intrusive thoughts. Thanks so much. Take care.