Gay thoughts

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gay intrusive thoughts

People with SO-OCD may experience intrusive thoughts and engage in compulsive behaviors to find certainty about their sexual identity. “ Am I actually (gay/straight/bisexual/asexual/etc.)?” “Have I just been pretending or lying about my sexuality the whole time?” “What if I’m straight even though I’ve only ever felt attracted to the same sex?”.

In a society where most are expected to be straight, it can be difficult to take a step back and truly ask if you’re gay, straight, or something else. Are you watching and checking out members of the same sex, to make sure you are not gay? You could be experiencing intrusive thoughts about your sexual orientation – a key symptoms of Sexual Orientation OCD (SO-)CD), also known as HOCD.

In the past, I treated my homosexual part of me as just something related to sexuality, and in a way repressed any romantic thoughts I could've had about a gay relationship. These doubts can range from being uncertain of whether or not you have just moved a part of your body to wondering whether or not you are the parent of your own child. All these different and unpleasant doubts are disturbing in a variety of ways.

One of the most fundamental is a type in which an obsessive individual begins to have doubts about his or her own sexual identity. This is not the same as the ordinary doubts people sometimes have about themselves and eventually answer in their own minds. With obsessions, questions are constantly repeated in a sufferer's mind, and they refuse to quit. There are never any answers that stick. Those with obsessions recognize that these doubtful thoughts are not their own, and try to resist them.

The frequency and intensity of these thoughts can worsen under stress or during idle moments, and have a habit of happening at the worst possible times. As obsessive thoughts go, this type is probably a lot more common than most people realize. Sufferers find them extremely difficult to reveal or discuss, due to the obvious embarrassment they feel. They live in isolation and shame as a result.

This is true of most sexual obsessions.

Please Note : Let me say here that I am not referring to those who actually are gay. I am talking about someone having an obsessive thought that happens to be about being gay. I lean toward the theory that sexual identity is imprinted before birth and that a person is really not given any choice in the matter, one way or the other. Homosexuality would seem to be a naturally occurring variation among humans and, as such, it is neither good nor bad.

I'm sure there are some who would differ with me on this point. When we talk about treating these thoughts, we are only referring to working with those who truly are heterosexual and who only obsess about being gay. In order to have such a thought, a sufferer need not ever have had a homosexual experience, or even any sexual experience at all. I have observed this symptom in both children as well as in adults. It may begin in adolescence or crop up later in adulthood.

As with other obsessions, the thought has a repetitious and nagging quality. Part of the distress connected with these thoughts must surely be social in origin. Let's face it: gay people have always been an oppressed minority within our culture, and to suddenly think of being in this position and to be stigmatized in this way can be frightening.

People don't generally obsess about positive subjects. I have sometimes wondered if those who experience the most distress from such thoughts as these do so because they were raised with more strongly homophobic or anti-gay attitudes to begin with, or if it is simply because questioning one's own sexuality can be such a basic doubt. I suppose this remains a question for research to answer.

Older psychoanalytic therapies often make people with this problem feel much worse by saying that the thoughts represent true inner desires. This has never proven to be so. Obsessions eventually lead to mental or physical compulsions. This is because compulsions relieve the anxiety caused by obsessions, at least for a little while, though they make things worse in the long run.

Because compulsions are rewarding in this way, they tend to be repeated.