HOCD spike or denial?

[bluebirds141516]

Hello all! I'm relatively new to this forum but I've posted on others. Unfortunately, I have failed to get much reassurance.
Anyway, to make a long a story short, I experimented in my younger teen ages online and it's been haunting me. I feel like that proves or makes me gay. I've had, what I hope to be HOCD, for 3 years now.
I've never been diagnosed but I want to refer to it as HOCD to keep myself sane.
I constantly search online. Just today I would say I looked up this condition 20-30 times. I won't wear plaid. Or any colours that would make me look day. I keep checking my voice to make sure it's high enough.
Anyway recently I feel like I'm in denial and my brain has settled and accepted my homosexuality. Today I watched a coming out video and I couldn't get through it without panicking. She said that she had no sexual attraction towards boys, but though she was straight. I've lost attraction towards boys, although all my crushes in the past have been on boys, except for my false attractions.
I'm scared I'm a lesbian now.
I've tried to suppress and ignore the thoughts and I keep telling my self it's HOCD. Does this mean I'm in denial??
I'm freaking out. I have little anxiety. This has happened before and t goes away.
Thanks for reading. Do you think I'm in denail or is this a spike? (By the way, I mean no offense to he LGBT community. I fully support and respect everyone.)

[Scaredlady]

Hi Bluebird.

You sound in quite the panic and to be honest I really see no reason for concern. How old are you now if you don't mind me asking? Still quite young with your whole life ahead of you I'd say.

Nothing can make someone look or be gay, in my opinion it's something an individual is born as; In the same way that I was born with dark hair. Alternatively if I was to shave off my long hair and start wearing DM boots, that wouldn't make me gay. I think you are focusing a lot on stereotypes as a consequence of your over awareness of what you're referring to as HOCD.

Using avoidance (avoiding plaid etc) as a coping mechanism and/or to wade off exaggerated outcomes is counter productive. In fairness though I do it too but I have started to address it recently (or in the least I am trying to do so) - Sometimes we need to confront our fears to accept that we have nothing to fear.

Being heterosexual, homosexual or any other sexual orientation really is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. Why does it scare you?

[bluebirds141516]

Thanks so much for responding.
I am quite young, in my middle teenage years I guess you could say...
I'm scared because I want to be straight, but I also don't want to be wrong. I don't want to marry or love a man then leave him for a women. Or lose control and sexually be with a women. I don't know why I don't want to be gay but I just don't. It's not that I'm afraid of not being accepted I just don't want to be gay. I want to be with a boy.
I was very panicked earlier okay but I'm a little more calm now. I need to try to move on from whatever this is...
I've been torturing myself for 3 years. I was dating a boy (it wasn't serious but we were pretty close before), and I kept telling myself that I was lying to him, myself, and I was gay and so i broke it off. Ultimately, I'm afraid of something like this happening again.
Again thanks for the response. Should I seek professional help?

[MyNameIsTerry]

The woman in the video who said she was straight but not sexually attracted to men could be asexual, not homosexual. So, are you trying to attach it to your fear of HOCD rather than look for all the possibilities?

You are far too young to be so concerned about marriage and long term commitments. That will come in time and it shouldn't be something to worry about now as you still have years of learning about yourself and what you like about other people anyway.

The important thing is how you feel about this. It's very obvious to anyone reading this thread that you are quite clear that you consider yourself straight and do not wish that to change. It's also very clear that you anxious about that changing as you don't want to be gay or bisexual, and it's clear you see their sexual preferences as fine too so it's not that you have a problem with their choices. This all says anxiety to me.

You have checking compulsions. You check to ensure you are acting in a manner you believe to be correct so as not to change into what you have a fear off.

You also research obsessively about the obsession in question, most likely trying to find confirmation of being this way or confirmation that you are not. You won't get reassurance from that because you are searching for absolute certainties and they don't matter because all that matters is how you feel about yourself.

I would suggest getting into therapy for this. They could help you to change what you are doing which is negative and feeding your fears e.g. checking, searching for info, etc.

Losing your sexual feelings to others comes with anxiety & depression. How many times have you seen threads on forums like this from men who can't get erections or people depressed who have no enthusiasm for anything in life? These disorders affect us in the way and you are associating this to your fear because it can be seen as evidence to you, but you are wrong there because it's just evidence that you are struggling with the symptoms of an anxiety disorder or possibly depression or both.

Don't try to supress thoughts, studies have shown that has the opposite effect. Think about it. You are telling your mind to stop thinking about something because you hate it. That means it has to put more effort into thinking about it to try and stop it. Your mind won't think about things because there is no importance in doing so, but adding importance forces it to work harder.