My brain has been an utter wreck lately due to a combination of OCD, internalized homophobia and heteronormativity. On one hand, I feel like I am a fake bisexual and just a straight girl in denial. I will look back on old memories about liking girls and I just wonder if I actually just wanted to be their friends instead. My mind will come up with a million excuse why I can’t be bisexual. For example, my brain thinks “Well, you didn’t like as many female fictional characters as you did male” or “You didn’t have daydreams about dating women” or “you only really seem to like masculine women, thus you probably only want to really date men”. Thus it feels like I can’t really be bisexual because of things like this. Plus when I’m out and about, I’m not always looking at women and I didn’t really look at other women a lot for a few years when I was trying to repress my attraction to women. I also feel very confused sometimes because of things that have been said to me. “You haven’t met the right man”, “You haven’t had good d*ck yet”, “Are you sure this isn’t a phase?” So on and so forth. Hearing shit like that really set me back in feeling okay with liking women and I feel like I need to try harder being heterosexual. I really tried hard for 3 years, but it wasn’t good for me. I can’t constantly keeping trying to deny and neglect myself of something that has been an integral part of me for years. I just can’t do it anymore. I want to allow myself to check out women more and be okay with the fact that I am attracted to women. I also have these constant worries that I am flaunting my sexuality too much just by wearing something that has a rainbow on it or says “pride”. I’m not trying to be annoying with my sexuality or anything, but I feel like I am. I also have thoughts about allowing myself to check out women or think women are attractive or getting excited seeing other LGBT people, but I put a mental block on myself. I say stuff to myself like “don’t look at her, you’re being a pervert” or “I’m just acting like a straight man”. I also feel sometimes like there is no point to any of this. Why am I questioning my sexuality? Why do I feel this way? I was able to shove it aside for a few years and maybe I could just do it a bit more. I ain’t trying to look for sympathy or an ass pat or any kind of validation. I know that it needs to come from myself first, so I can be okay with the way I feel and how I feel attraction, particularly to women. My OCD also plays a big part in all of this. I know it’s probably telling me that I am straight and I also deal with intrusive thoughts about men. When I try and fantasize about women, my brain will try to replace her with a man instead or try and pretend I am doing things with men when I don’t want to think about it because those thoughts bother me. I feel like I can’t enjoy anything with women because of what’s going on in my mind. I also fear that I somehow ‘lost’ my attraction to women. My brain feels like a mess and I’m constantly fighting with myself and I’m honestly just so tired.
Hey I can totally feel you and I am sorry you're going throught this. I don't think I can help on the "internalize homophobia" part, that I think is here: But I can help a bit on the OCD part. First I advice you to seek therapy with an OCD therapist if you haven't started yet; if you can't do therapy download NOCD app and inform yourself about the disease in detail(I recently bought this book "Freedom from Obessive-Compulsive Disorder" by Grayson), also this week(11 - 18 October) was the OCD awareness week, look up on instagram you will find a lot of stories and webinar about! It was useful for me. Remind the NOCD/books/advocate and therapists on instagram are just a way to inform yourself about the disease and not to do therapy on your own. First choice is always therapy with a specialist or you can mess up the disease more. As I had by trying to challenge my fears in the past months. Stop and call for help. Also I won't give you reassurance, but I advice to look up at the cognitive error your brain(and NOT YOU) made. For example: Yes but they were women. If a gay man like feminine boys then he's not gay but he likes girls and he is a straight in denial? You see how much is distorted this thought? I have a gay friend, he once said to me that, when he was younger, he had crushes on females on tv. Does that mean he's not gay? Of course not, he likes boys not girls. This is my field. In this three lines it emerges your lucid self, what you really are and want and not what the OCD wants you to believe. It wasn't good for you, you had to TRY HARD for 3 years. Sis, if you're trying hard to force yourself to being heteresexual then probably you don't like being heterosexual afterall. When I need to do compulsions I try hard to get hard on a same sex fantasy, I spent hours because when I finish my mind comes up with "well maybe if you imagine looking by this perspective you would like to do it" and I prooceed and I feel nothing again and again and again. Sometimes I just want to finish to jerk off and I think everythink would be good but I literally can't, my body doesn't respond to it. I am forcing myself to do something my brain doesn't recognize as exciting and you're doing the same, on a lesser scale probably. The problem is that we don't memorize this information, we memorize it for a brief time when we get reassurance but then the doubt kicks us again and we forgot who we are. So when your ocd kics you again try to remember who you are, how you felt thinking about a woman you like and try to avoid doing compulsions(that in your cases are mental I think). Then try to accept the thoughts(that is not to accept the meaning attached to the thought or what the thought says, it means to accept that you have made that thoughts, that's all what it means). OCD is like a boggart. It will transform in your biggest fear but if you don't give much importance to it and try to joke about it then probably it will fade. So if your OCD says "Yeah you really like boys" you answer "Yeah this may be true, you know maybe I will try to go out with a different boy everynight but at the moment I am very busy doing this" or "Oh look another intrusive thought about being an HeTeRosExUal WomAn in dEnIaL, this brings me some anxiety but I will sit with this feeling without judge myself for having it. Meanwhile I will focus my attention to this very important stuff I need to do" and so on. Remember that you will never get certainty if you try to answer to obsessions, because the right answer doesn't exist. It will be hard, obsessions will adapt to your strategy and probably become more sneaky but it won't last forever. As soon as you will be yourself everything will be good. I am sorry again, I hope this helps and I hope I haven't give you so much reassurance to fuel the cycle. xo
This is started to happen to me lately, it ruins everything right? But I think it's just a way to engange compulsions. At least for me this is what happens: if it try to fantasize about women sometimes I will get intrusive thoughts about men and I lose erection suddenly. Then I try to follow the intrusive thought(to check if I can jerk off on a man, because I had a thoughts about it, you know usual stuff) and spent hours on it trying to get something up. I don't know about you but if it happens just accept the thought and go on with your fantasy. I'ts like when an adverts pops up when you're trying to watch streaming somewhere on the internet. An annoying torture. But if a pop-up pops up you close it and proceed to enjoy the film. If you get too many pop-ups then probably it's not the right time to fantasize.
