One of the magazines, Mens’ Vogue, featured a picture of an attractive male actor on the cover. In an airport terminal with time to kill, he wandered into a bookstore. For Rob, the obsessions about being gay started suddenly. Over the years he experienced symptoms as diverse as excessive hand washing, having to get up and sit down “just right,” and obsessions about harming others. Rob struggled with OCD since his late teens. Take, for example, the case of Rob (not his real name), a straight man in his late 30s. After all, how do people “know” whether they are straight or gay? Rob’s HOCD Story (Someone who identifies as gay, on the other hand, might be vulnerable to obsessive thoughts about being straight.) For the person with this type of obsession, finding immediate proof that one is not gay can be difficult. They occur most frequently in heterosexual people suffering from OCD. Sexual orientation is not an uncommon theme for obsessive thoughts. Obsessive thoughts about being gay are one example of this process. The search for such proof only leads to more anxiety. We get anxious about the possibility of something that can’t be proven or disproven. This is the paradox of obsessive thinking. For example, if someone has an obsessive thought about harming themselves, how can they prove that it’s not true, beyond a doubt? If someone has an obsessive thought like “I hate God,” how can they then convince themselves that they don’t? If someone has an obsessive thought about wanting to sexually molest a child, how can they prove that it’s just an obsession and that they’re not in denial of their pedophilic tendencies? For people with OCD, the uncertainty that accompanies these situations can be very distressing. “Am I Gay?” is an obsessive thought that can create intense anxiety for some people.Īnother common characteristic of obsessions is that they are difficult to completely disprove. Obsessions typically consist of a thought (e.g., “I want to pick up that knife and stab myself”) followed by intense anxiety at having had that thought. Among the most popular themes for these thoughts are blasphemy, violence, and sex. Obsessive thoughts come in several varieties. Read on for three stories of HOCD and recovery. HOCD is one of them - and it involves obsessive thoughts about one’s sexual orientation.