Major HOCD spike!!

[Soda]

Oh god please help me, I’m having a major spike in HOCD! For the past few days I’ve been fine, but then all of the sudden now I’m starting to feel very REAL feelings about one of my gay friends!

I’m not really thinking about my friend but these feelings are occurring. They aren’t sexual AT ALL. It’s like anxiety but, my brain connects it that people feel this way also when they are in love. So by thinking of her and having this blushy sweaty feeling I feel I am in love with her. Our whole friendship I’ve felt very positive about her, I’ve never felt the need to be close to her in a sexual way or anything. But not my brain is convincing me through these anxious feelings that I have a crush on her, and that I am going to HAVE to be with her, and that me and my boyfriend are going to fail because I’m actually in love with her.

What do I do? I’ve had HOCD and ROCD for all this time but I’m slowly slipping into the thought that I actually LOVE her.

God I need help and don’t know what to do. All I feel right now is anxiety and not actual love or sexual attraction or anything. I love my boyfriend for sure, I’m sexually attracted to him for sure, but all these feelings....it’s making feel so terrible. I know I DONT want a future with my friend why is my brain doing this to me.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Try to see it your subconscious mind saying "I think I've found some similar thoughts/feelings/sensations that maybe should be attached to each other but I'm not sure. So, conscious mind can you make a decision on this so I know whether this is correct and can continue to make these associations".

That's all is doing. It's found some "data" that it thinks may be linked. It has looked at your beliefs and not found a match therefore it doesn't know what to do. This needs the conscious mind, the executive brain, to either say it's correct or not.

Think about feeling excited. Have you ever noticed how when anxiety is building, maybe think about your chest sensations, does it seem similiar to excitement? Have you ever been excited and worried those sensations will tip over into a panic attack? I have, I've spoken to others who have.

Isn't it because the subconscious is trying to protect us from harm and it is seeing something it thinks may need associating with our fear?

It's protecting us from the big scary bear. But then it sees a lion. It's nothing like a bear. But wait, hasn't it got big scary teeth? Doesn't it walk like a predator? Does it look aggressive?

Wouldn't it then raise this new threat to the conscious mind to react? Then it knows it's correct in making associations between the two.

You may now be thinking doesn't this mean my subconscious might learn to be in love with my friend? Won't that then change me? No, because you also have deeper beliefs associated to your identity and these are much harder to change. Like your understanding of right or wrong. Your sexuality will be in there too. Your subconscious will still have this clash of "data" when it makes comparisons even if you have been feeding it negatively because the process to change such strong beliefs is much more ingrained into you. It will continue to clash. This will mean it continues to ask conscious mind what to do. And all through this process despite conscious mind reacting negatively (fear, panic, shame, guilt, etc) it also contains thoughts of nor loving your friend, the same sex and how you love your BF. These latter thoughts reinforce other subconscious beliefs about your choices which oppose the HOCD/ROCD.

And another thing, how many OCDers have been dragged kicking & screaming into loving the sex they didn't? How many became child sex offenders because of their POCD (I've never even seen a criminal cases attributed to it)? How many harm based OCDers are banged up for being violent offenders (again never seen anything in the media and medical professionals continue to believe intrusive thoughts are rarely acted on)?

So why would you change if the rest of us don't? Why are you different? Don't you notice how others with OCD make the same threads about their worries? Doesn't what we say display the same patterns?

[Soda]

It’s so ridiculously annoying how my body can react to one thought and make me feel like “this is it, the real realization!!” and mimic the anxiety of how I’d feel if I actually did make the realization.

I definitely need to speak to my therapist about this. This morning I have the after panic response that’s kind of like....exhausted and not really reacting to the thought the way I normally would. I have this weird acceptance feeling but sort of in the way that my body is on autopilot and just going along, whatever happens happens but I still don’t feel love or romantic feelings or sexual feelings for my friend. This has happened to me before after a large panic attack about lesbianism. I woke up the next morning feeling like an acceptance of this is who I am, and even though I didn’t feel those feelings I just had a weird acceptance. Then it faded over time. So I’m hoping that this is where this is going, as this is usually the last stage of my OCD before it turns onto something else.

The problem with this one particular OCD is that I feel like it’s not a scary thing to be gay, I’m sure if I did love my best friend in that way it’d be fine. But it’s just not who I am, it’s not my reality and so my brain taking me and pulling me so far out from reality is what is scaring me. It’s almost as if I can’t tell what is reality anymore and maybe I’m just running from the reality of the situation.

I’ve had these same OCD issues with my brother, my dad, and obviously those are disgusting taboo and twisted thoughts to have, and so those were easier to dispel with the POCD and HOCD. But I see nothing wrong with gay people or my friend. It’s just not who I am. And even as I’m writing this my brain is thinking that if I’m not disgusted by it and accepting of it then it’s truly who I am.

[LouiseAndy]

I was friends with a guy who suffered terrible with POCD, like he used to talk to us over and over again about how scary it was to feel like this. Like to the point he wouldn't join us out anywhere because of the fear he felt.

He went to therapy, he told us his therapist made a good point about how he felt this but he knew how wrong it was. He would never act on it. It was just a thought. Something that buzzed around his mind endlessly but it was just a thought. It wasn't anything he would ever want to carry out. So, I think it's good to open up to your therapist! I know it can be scary but it might be the right help you need!

I have OCD in certain areas of my life, I know how overwhelming they can be. So sorry I don't have any further insight for you x.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yep, you are washed out from all the anxiety. Don't read into as "maybe I really agree with my thoughts", you are simply exhausted.

Yes, I can remember someone once taking some offence to HOCD on here because obviously there is nothing wrong being gay. Of course there isn't and we shouldn't conflate homophobia with HOCD. It's much easier with the POCD or harm based themes because we know they are wrong and can more easily understand why it would be shocking due to the class with our morality. So saying to someone who is LGBT+ how your HOCD makes you feel could imply homophobia if they don't understand about OCD (perhaps in a similar way of how ignorance of POCD can mean someone thinks it's actually paedophilia) but then that's just another consideration we may have when being open about our mental health and having to ensure our audience won't react with ignorance (or an entrenched view and won't listen to reason). Besides HOCD also covers LGBT+ fearing they are turning straight or any other combination they are not so it's not as simple as a homophobia argument from someone ignorant of it can make it seem.

Maybe with one like HOCD it's roots are less in the potential something is wrong and more about not being what you want/right for you, loss of control/not being in control of your identity, the change meaning not being with your preferred sex/partner, etc?

There may be factors such as religion but these are irrespective of OCD and would only add onto their complication.

I've found my themes combine and it sounds like you have that problem with HOCD+ROCD because of your focus on your BF across them both. They differ slightly but they seem to easily have some overlap where they can both be reacting.

[Soda]

Yep, you are washed out from all the anxiety. Don't read into as "maybe I really agree with my thoughts", you are simply exhausted.

Yes, I can remember someone once taking some offence to HOCD on here because obviously there is nothing wrong being gay. Of course there isn't and we shouldn't conflate homophobia with HOCD. It's much easier with the POCD or harm based themes because we know they are wrong and can more easily understand why it would be shocking due to the class with our morality. So saying to someone who is LGBT+ how your HOCD makes you feel could imply homophobia if they don't understand about OCD (perhaps in a similar way of how ignorance of POCD can mean someone thinks it's actually paedophilia) but then that's just another consideration we may have when being open about our mental health and having to ensure our audience won't react with ignorance (or an entrenched view and won't listen to reason). Besides HOCD also covers LGBT+ fearing they are turning straight or any other combination they are not so it's not as simple as a homophobia argument from someone ignorant of it can make it seem.

Maybe with one like HOCD it's roots are less in the potential something is wrong and more about not being what you want/right for you, loss of control/not being in control of your identity, the change meaning not being with your preferred sex/partner, etc?

There may be factors such as religion but these are irrespective of OCD and would only add onto their complication.

I've found my themes combine and it sounds like you have that problem with HOCD+ROCD because of your focus on your BF across them both. They differ slightly but they seem to easily have some overlap where they can both be reacting.

I thought my friend (the one who I keep having these panic about, yes I TOLD HER about all of this -- we even laughed about how silly it was that these thoughts were happening! As soon as I heard her voice on the phone I was like...this panic is just panic and there are no feelings. We don't live near each other, talk once every three or four months, we aren't even close and have never been! But I did open up to her about this because she studies psychology and so I figured she'd understand a lot about it.) would find it offensive. She didn't but, I kind of regret telling her because now it's something both of us are going to know.

I just love my boyfriend so much, before all of this panic starts I feel completely safe and comfortable in my relationship. Then, it's like a whirlwind! I feel like I'm getting sucked into feeling things I don't want and my brain comes up with all of these false memories, evidence, things like that. It's so....exhausting. I just can't imagine my friendship ever being normal again which is saddening, and I'm scared to see my friend in person in case there's gonna be this romantic feeling now.

This all started because I had an obsession with tarots and astrology. I looked up my boyfriend and got many negative things. I had previously had a lot of HOCD thoughts about my friend so I looked at ours too, and it said we were a good match. Which freaked me out, because I was hoping it would be evidence AGAINST and it ended up being evidence FOR. Now every time I'm slightly over this and things are going AMAZING in my relationship, it pops into my brain.

I do like to assert control, because when I was little my mother really asserted her control on my identity. She told me who I was, I was never allowed to choose anything for myself. So now I feel like part of is I don't know who I am in respect of personality and the other part is that I don't know how a normal person just lets things happen to them and doesn't overanalyze, because all my life my whole being has been overanalyzed by my mother. So I think when I explain that to people it's easier for them to understand the OCD. I'm hoping this will be the same for my therapist.