Is this OCD? (NEED HELP!)

{WARNING: very long, descriptive, and can cause spikes to some people}

Hello, I hope you’re having a good day today, and I’m also new here. I’m a 15-year-old girl and currently going through confusion, anxiety, and distress. As of now I diagnosed myself with OCD, and I know that I cannot self-diagnose myself without a proper diagnosis from a professional. But with some of the symptoms of OCD, I feel that I can relate to it at a certain point.

So, important details about my past, as a child, my family would tell me that I would organize my stuffed bears from rainbow color and even my colored pencils the same way. I avoid the cracks on the floor, until it felt right to me (I occasionally still do this), I would organize the movie cases from alphabetical order, organizing my school papers from the exact date I had them. And I would always have this habit of making lists on just about anything for no reason but I felt calm and relieved when I would do it. As of now I wash my hands more than I should because I wash my hands if I feel that my hands felt dirty, still make lists, I usually re-read or re-write words a lot and count. I have these mini-panic attacks if I felt like I lost something and have the need to check to make sure I have it and feel a huge relief when I do have it and if I did lose something I would think of the worst possible scenario, I would always research anything to reassure myself of things. I especially always felt the need to be control of my life, from my mind, emotions, and actions always. So, I don’t know if any of these are symptoms of OCD??

So, I am currently in a relationship with a boy for about a year and 5 months now, in the beginning of our relationship was rocky, but that has passed and we are doing much better now, and hoping it will stay like this, and I’m a serious introverted type of girl and he is calm and has this child-like nature that I love because I’m not so serious when I’m with him comparing to other people that I talk to and he brings me out of my comfort zone, which is a good thing. So, last year in December, I started having these thoughts of, “what if I don’t love him”, “what if I’m just faking my feelings just to stay with him”, “if I looked at other guys meant that I wasn’t attracted to him”, and “if I don’t feel anything or think about him meant that I didn’t love him.” This anxiety made me want to look this issue up and would usually find stories about people breaking up with their partners which not only caused me huge anxiety, but it also made me cry because I didn’t want his to happen. This compulsion of seeking reassurance lead me to an article about ROCD (relationship-obsessive compulsive disorder), which is when someone in a current relationship questions their true-nature, quality, and love for their partner that they start having anxiety and doubts about the relationship altogether and go to high extremes to reduce the anxiety. Knowing that what I was feeling was normal in a sense that I wasn’t alone, which reassured me for the short-term (which what OCD does) and I started having more questions that I just had to check about ROCD more and more to have all the answers and questioned myself if I even had ROCD to begin with (another trick that OCD throws at us).

I even started having violent intrusive thoughts about physically hurting him which scared me and I shrug it off, which is known as (Harm-OCD), when you fear hurting the ones you love and acting upon them, (but I fear that later in the future I might need to deal with this). I came upon another article about ROCD and talked about that “love is not a feeling but an action, it’s something that you invest on, and it takes time for it to bloom and developing patience and understanding” and I finally had understood that I do love him. I stopped reassuring myself and the thoughts slowly started to fade, but I still do get the occasional thoughts and anxiety about it, but now I can just shrug it off. And I stopped comparing my boyfriend with other guys and stopped having expectations about the relationship which now makes me more happy and insightful about it. So, I guess you could say that I started recovering from this little by little.

Up until these last 2 months I started obsessing about a new fear that grew on me, so I was watching Youtube videos and came across a video about a girl coming out as bisexual which caused me great anxiety and panic that I started taking multiple quizzes to reassure myself that I was straight, and would have thoughts like, “what if I’m lesbian”, so I researched about it and came across HOCD (homosexual-obsessive compulsive disorder) which when a heterosexual male or female has intrusive sexual images of the same-sex and causes one to question their sexuality even though they have known that they have been straight their whole lives, [side note: this doesn’t affect just straight people but gay, bisexual, asexual, and transsexual people but have their appropriate names for this OCD, another way to call it is SO-OCD {sexual orientation-obsessive compulsive disorder} to name it respectfully. Everything it described was just as if I was talking to myself, everything seemed to make sense, so again I felt a bit relieved that something like this existed, but not even 10 minutes and I was checking non-stop about HOCD and other peoples experiences and some caused me a spike. And these intrusive thoughts caused me to question and look about into my past.

{WARNING: SPIKE AHEAD}

When I was a little girl I had a female neighbor where I used to live with and she is about a year younger than me (or 2) and we experimented with a kiss, and I remember liking it because we would do this a lot, so then I was also exposed to porn at a young age, I would watch lesbian kissing type of porn and I would masturbate to it and I remember that I got caught and was punished. So, these flashbacks of my past were some kind of proof that I was “lesbian.” I even tell myself “I’m straight, I’ve always been straight” over and over again while my thoughts would throw back at me “you’re lesbian,” I just get so frustrated of this stupid feeling. And now I am constantly on looking at where my eyes are wandering at the same-sex and I get these groinal responses and it makes me worry about it if these are genuine reactions or anxiety, and every time this happens I get irritated at myself, and end up feeling hopeless and depressed, and fear of being in denial. I check myself if I act, talk, or dress lesbian and obsess over my appearance severely. It’s gotten bad where I do my best to avoid people who are gay or bisexual at my school, hate going in the girls locker room, avoid friends, (basically people in general), can’t be in public because I’ll get easily tempered or just start crying, anything associated with gay or bisexual I avoid. I mean I was never like this before, and had no problem with people and I’m very accepting towards others, but now it’s like the tables have been flipped and I just can’t without worrying or getting irritated.

My whole life I have had crushes and romantic feelings with boys, my first crush was a boy, and it’s been like that ever since. Before this anxiety and my boyfriend, I would look at guys who I’d find attractive and if they ever saw me or talked to me I’d blush and feel nervous and would flirt in some cases (even to fictional characters in movies or cartoons.) But now it feels like my soul has been taken away from me and only have a void inside me. I have one thought telling me my real-self (reminding me who I was before this anxiety) and another thought telling me (you’re “that” and other intrusive thoughts) and feels like a struggle every day. I couldn’t take this feeling anymore so I told my family about this and they said that you’re not “that”, so stop thinking about it”, this didn’t help and caused me to cry, then little time passed and they saw that I wasn’t getting better and I had to go to therapy.

I was in therapy last month, and I told her everything that bothered me (except the part about my past), she told me that I have anxiety-disorder and she told me that you’re young and that I should break up with my boyfriend and maybe in the future that I could be “that” (well from other things that she told me sounded like if I was in the closet and I just didn’t want to accept it, which made it worse), and I f****** hate her for that, [I only went for 2 sessions], so I stopped going to therapy even to this day. And last week and couple of days I still have the intrusive thoughts but with no anxiety, so I started to have “backdoor spikes” which caused me to worry because if I didn’t worry about the thoughts meant that I was accepting the fact that I was lesbian and me worrying about the thoughts was proof that I was straight (it’s fucked up if you really think about it). So right now, I feel anxious, confused, and depressed, and numbness in my heart, because I have another thought telling me (you got turned on by that kiss and you watch lesbian porn, so just accept it.) Now I feel like I “want” to be lesbian and do these acts with other girls but I don’t want to. I f****** hate this. I badly want to be the person who I was before all this s*** happened, I even plead to God for this and when it’s bad I feel suicidal and depressed. It’s like my freedom has been taken away from me. I never had any feelings for girls ever, only boys, I would only see girls as friends, someone to look up to, or wishing that I could look like them.

At times, I watch porn and get aroused by both straight and lesbian but when I watch lesbian porn (and I do get aroused and masturbate to it), I feel guilty afterwards. I don’t feel like myself anymore, I feel like a different person and I’m never happy as I used to. I try to think the good times of my past but I can’t and I feel like I’m just a lie. Now I feel numb because I feel like I am gay, but I know that I have always liked guys. Now I’m fearing that I’m bisexual. If I could imagine my happiest thought would be having a mutual and happy relationship and an unbreakable bond between my boyfriend, having children with him, and being heterosexual for the rest of my life, is the best thing I could ever ask for.

And that’s basically it, I told you everything what I felt, thought, and gone through till’ this point. I just had to get it out of my chest, because I’ve told my family that I could possibly have OCD or P-O (pure obsessions), and everything seemed to match up to me, but they only tell me that I have nothing and just get those stupid thoughts out of your head (which isn't easy for me to do at this point), I just don’t feel understood, but I know they’re only trying to help.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this until the end, (I could have made it shorter and to the point but with what I’m facing I need to be as detailed as possible.) I would like to know your thoughts and opinions on this matter, feedback, or advice. This is greatly appreciated. If anyone has a question for me I’d be more than happy to answer them. And for all of you people out there who are currently going through the same thing as I am or any other form of OCD is that you’re not alone and I know how you feel, just keep going, persevere, and never give up no matter how struggling, painful and bleak the future may be. One day we’ll break free from this monster, and together we can go through this and take back our lives. One more thing, if anyone wants to talk to me I’d be more than glad to.

No one can tell you whether what your dealing with is OCD aside from a professional, and you somewhat hastily decided to cutoff meeting with someone who can genuinely help you. Sexuality is a spectrum, and it's okay not to know. It's been proven all individuals, especially women, experience some level of same sex attraction. Clearly you're someone who likes order and needs to put things in categories but people aren't crayons. There's no set answer or way to differentiate.

I recommend reconsidering the therapist. She is someone who you can talk to about what you're facing and help you cope with it in a healthy way. As someone with generalized anxiety, I wish I could see a therapist for than the every two weeks my college offers.

Also, just because you experience same-sex attraction that doesn't mean you cannot have a happy and fulfilling relationship with someone of the opposite sex. It's fully possible and plenty of people make it happen.

It's easy to get wrapped up in your own anxiety but go out and get some help with this because anxiety isn't the easiest thing to handle alone and your own confusion regarding your sexuality isn't really grounds to deprive yourself of the opportunity to work through the bigger issues in your life.