Can anxiety prevent arousal?

I can see how distressing this is for you and good job going for the evaluation. You're taking a big step towards figuring things out.

It all does get confusing, especially if you're trying to figure yourself out and then there are all those other factors causing more confusion and stress.

When I discovered myself and my sexuality, then it all made me incredibly overwhelmed. I had so many questions. What label fits me? Do I like women? Why didn't I notice before or did I? What signs there were? Why can't I find peace and stop questioning? Is it OCD? Is it, because I'm not really trans and fooling myself and am just lesbian? These all went through my mind. I do this day feel like I'm not allowed to use bisexual label for myself. Polysexual label is okay to use, when you feel like you don't with within other labels and this is what brought me peace.

Everyone has their own type they get attracted to. I think your partner has this something you love about her, otherwise why would you two even be together and it's clear you love her and isn't that what matters the most? I think love goes beyond gender or arousal. Sometimes it's enough being together with who you love.

I hope you soon get to the bottom of everything and that you can live peacefully, withouth constantly thinking about it.

 

No worries about late responses. I've been really busy with uni, so haven't been very active either. The main thing for you is to figure things out, so you can be happy and healthy and be in control. That means therapy and hopefully eliminating or confirming the OCD, with the help of the specialist in order to heal and workin on lessening that anxiety, so you can be more at peace with yourself. It's okay to take things step by step, while working on yourself.


Good luck to you with the evaluation and therapy. I hope it goes very well.

 

Hi, it's all OCD.

Sorry for confusing you.

The meaning of it is that there are people who are gay and they have sexual obsessions, but it DON'T mean YOU are gay.

NOT everyone who have sexual obsessions are actually gay and this includes you.

YOU have OCD and seeing a specialist is at utmost importance, if you wish to get it under control.

You have all the symptoms of OCD, which is why everyone says it. Talk to the OCD specialist.

 

I know for sure that this person has OCD and is not gay. He is diagnosed. Stop giving him ideas. He has hard enough time. You've been warned.

 

Unlike sexual orientation OCD, identifying as LGBT is not an illness.

Feeling attracted to people of the same gender, in and of itself, isn't unhealthy and doesn't have to cause distress. For an LGBT person, unhappiness about their identity usually comes from discrimination or internalized shame because they've learned to see being gay as inferior to being straight. With time and (in some cases) counseling, many gay people live happy and fulfilling lives dating people who are their same gender.

The only person who can say whether a person has OCD or is LGBT is a mental health professional. A person with OCD is fixated on whether or not they are LGBT, whereas gay people are attracted to and genuinely want a relationship with someone of the same gender. Because OCD can be so pervasive and entrenched in doubts, however, the best person to ask is again a mental health professional.

Us stating that they can be gay is just getting them be fixated more on this and it's not healthy and causes harm. They won't believe this anyway. ONLY OCD SPECIALIST AND PROPER THERAPY CAN HELP, not you or us can state they are gay or not and this person isn't, even therapist have told him this.

 

No offense, but unless you are a clinician with experience with OCD in general, and OCD that specifically shows up with sexual orientation in particular, then I, slightly less respectfully than last time, ask that you shut the fuck up. This is an extremely nuanced area, and from your posts, you don't seem to have the faintest clue what the differential diagnostic criteria are.

So if you would like to demonstrate to us your clincal credentials and experience working with clients with OCD with a focus on sexual orientation, please open an Ask the Staff post, and provide us with information on your credentials.

And if you don't, kindly stop posting bullshit. The EC members that have OCD struggle enough without you confusing them further.

 

Please cite your sources, from credible, peer-reviewed articles, not somebody's opinion blog.

Oh, what's that? You don't have any peer-reviewed sources?

Then I'll thank you to kindly stop posting bullshit you pulled out of your ass.

 

I would be curious to know on what basis she has come to that conclusion. In particular, I would like to know what her differential diagnosis methodology was to determine that this is, or might be, a genuine issue of questioning sexual orientation rather than OCD. If you are inclined to answer, I'd be interested in her response.

 

Any competent therapist is going to focus on what the client wants to focus on, so in that regard, she's doing what her ethical code requires her to do.

At the same time, a therapist with a specialty in OCD, who is working with a client who clearly displays obsessive-compulsive traits AND an obsessive interest in sexual orientation without significant evidence toat objectively supports the idea that the person has same-sex attraction ought to be encouraging the client to explore how the obsessive traits may be fueling the belief. Without doing that, the therapist may inadvertently make the obsessive tendencies worse.

Now... I am not specialist in treating OCD, but I do have the benefit of interacting with dozens of people with sexual orientation-focused OCD symptoms, and I can tell you that not a single one of them has ever resolved their obsessive tendencies by further exploration of their sexual questioning. This is because the obsessive-compulsive tendencies literally hijack reason centers in the brain.

The example I give is, there is a vacant lot that used to have a house on it, and anyone who walks by the lot says "Yup, that's a vacant lot." But the individual with OCD thinks he sees a house on the lot. And no amount of factual evidence will convince him otherwise. He finds the tiniest bit of evidence... "See, I see a little bit of a concrete foundation over there..." and uses that to convince himself that the house is there. 100 people can gather in front of the lot and tell the person there's no house on it, but the person with OCD absolutely can't see that, no matter how much evidence he sees to the contrary.. because in his brain, there MUST be a house there.

The analogy isn't perfect, but it gives an idea. And the problem is, just as the house appears absolutely real to the person in the example, your situatio appears absolutely real to you, and you find tiny, insignificant pieces of information, and extrapolate them to mean something they don't.

Treating OCD cognitively is a specialty. I don't know a lot about it. But it does not seem, to me, like continuing to play into the delusion (because that is, essentially, what it is) is doing you a service.

 

And this is, unfortunately, exactly what OCD does. The person who has OCD around light switches, door locks, or cracks on sidewalks CANNOT simply not avoid engaging in the compulsive behavior, in the same way theobsessive cannot stop thinking sbut thins and swearing there is evidence that isn'tthere.

One route might be to try medication for 6 months. I'd wager that your whole perspective will change if you get on the right medication. Thst's how it ususlly works... the person emails a couple months later and says "I have no idea why I was thinking that way. I totally get how ridiculous it sounds now."