I decided to take a shot and come to the board tonight. Normally it's blocked, but I disabled the filter just to come here. Anyway, as soon as I saw the page load - the messages, the colors, the subject lines (including whatever this madness is with some guy posting pictures)...well, it was like pavlovs dogs. I'm already feeling a little more anxious than I have in DAYS. It's like I'm a pot of water and coming to site is like switching on a gas flame underneath me -I can feel myself starting to bubble up with thoughts and anxiety. The clarity and logic that has started coming back to me in a few days feels like it's already being enveloped by a fog. My brain is starting to pose questions that, just five minutes ago, I could have easily dismissed - but now I'm starting to doubt. Just from coming to this site.
So, with that said - I don't even know if I'll be coming back here at all any more. Maybe much later down the road when I'm significantly better...but I think I'll be taking an extended vacation after this post. I'm not even going to bother with reading the replies.
Neverthless, I haven't forgotten the nights I spent sobbing, pulling my hair and pounding my fist on the desk while obsessively searching the net for SOME kind of answer. And I know that someone reading the site is eventually going to read this post in that same condition. So in the interest of helping them...I'm going to post some things below that have really helped me over the past week or so.
**oh yeah, I've posted some rather sexual stuff below - so you might wanna abstain from reading it. It's nothing raunchy, but I really feel as though I would be cheating someone out of good advice if I didn't mention it.**
1) Okay. Um, I'm not going to go to deep into this because I'm sure that many people are going to dismiss my entire post after reading this. So I'll just mention it: give Jesus a chance. Seriously. I'm not talking about RELIGION or following a bunch of fundamentalist RULES...I'm talking about being alone for 10 to 20 minutes a day and praying. That's it. Not going through motions, not trying to be super-christian, not trying to be what anyone wants you to be. Just being alone, reading something from the book of John, and praying for peace, clarity and wisdom. If you do this - have patience. Don't expect anything for a while. But keep trying and learn about faith. If nothing else, just do something SPIRITUAL.
2) I've learned a nice combonation of GOOD exposure and BAD exposure. This board is BAD exposure. In fact, it's not exposure at all. Porn is bad exposure. Reassurance is BAD exposure. But being in public, being around people, forcing yourself to go through your day - that's GOOD exposure. In the past few days, I've not allowed myself a SHRED of internet reassurance or exposure. Not a peep. Not one damn thing. But I've also given a public speech at a film festival, introduced my father to a suspected gay friend, gone to therapy once, met my girlfriends mother who has uncanny gaydar, and just been out with friends, people, etc.
I really can't stress this enough. You HAVE GOT to get outside of your home and GO THROUGH YOUR DAY. This is exposure even though it's not dealing with exclusive homosexual subjects. Because, if you're like me, you've been so scared of socializing, women and talking to people - you have to be exposed to that stuff to. Just expose yourself to LIFE. You'll get better. Trust me.
3)Okay, this is a little embarassing, but this has helped me more than anything else. Ahhh...(red faced..:) ). Okay, I'll admit that through this whole HOCD thing (6+ months) I feel into a trap of compulsive masturbation and looking at porno. I was doing it 4 to 5 times a day...and that doesn't include maintaining a sexual relationship with my mate.
This was generating a multitude of problems:
ONE-- the constant exposure to porno was polluting my sense of sexuality. Stop rolling your eyes. I know what I'm talking about here. After six months of masturbating 28 times a week to porno, I was finding my girlfriend less and less attractive and the porno more and more addicting. The gradual lack of attraction to my g/f started my brain to thinking "oh my god - you can't even get an erection around a naked girl! What does THAT tell you?!?!! It tells you that YOU'RE GAY!!!!!!" Also, porno is so warped and disgusting, that it starts to erode ones sense of what is sexually healthy or deviant. Hence, I really think that this was causing my lack of repulsion to gay thoughts. But it wasn't just gay thoughts, it was any kind of sexual deviance...I was seeing enough of it in porno that I just got used to it and couln't be grossed out by it anymore.
TWO-- if you're masturbating 5 times a day, you aren't going to feel arousal. At least I wasn't. My body was so exhausted sexually, that when I'd look at girls - I just wasn't aroused. At all. This only made me want to masturbate more to make sure that my lack of arousal WASN'T from being gay. This only made it worse. I mean, I was going weeks at time without being able to get an erection unless I was masturbating. I could think about a group of swimsuit models stripping for me in my bedroom and my penis would stay limp. I felt nothing. I chalked this up to being gay and it made me panic, but the truth of that matter is that I was just sexually exhausted.
THREE-- because I wasn't feeling aroused, but felt obligated to be sexual with my girlfriend, I felt a fear towards sex. So, imagine what was going on in my head when you consider this and the above two problems: I wasn't feeling any attraction for real girls, I wasn't able to get erections or feel arousal for my naked girlfriend (who's a model and actress BTW), and I didn't want to have sex with my girlfriend. Take all that and throw in 8 hours of internet reassurance, masturbation and panic ...and you had a REALLY SERIOUS case of HOCD. Anyone who's been reading my posts will testify to that.
Now, I FORCED myself to quit looking at porno (with the aid of my internet filter), FORCED myself to stop masturbating COMPLETELY (I don't think it's unhealthy, but in my situation is was EXTREMELY unhealthy) and FORCED myself to do the other things I mentioned earlier in my post. After about two days of this, my sex drive was so out of control...I mean...I didn't have time to have intrusive gay thoughts because I was having instrusive heterosexual thoughts. I was getting erections 10 times a day and salivating at every pretty girl out there. I walked by some chick at the movie theater who was wearing perfume and I swear I went into some kind of trance. Somewhere WAY back in my mind were the HOCD thoughts, but they were obliterated by my heterosexual sex drive. If I thought about gay sex, I can't say as though I felt repulsed - but I sure as hell didn't want it. That's for sure. The only thing I wanted was to tear my girlfriends clothes off and ...well, you know. ALL the good stuff. :)
I mean, I'm gonna have to go to therapy because I can't stop thinking about straight sex!!! I couldn't even focus in church today because my girlfriend kept touching my hand.
Anyway, the point is that...the compulsions (masturbating, porno, scouring every corner of the internet, reassurance from my girlfriend)....were ruining me. They were litterally shredding my psyche so that I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. But once I stopped, it was like I bounced back to being SOMEWHAT normal in a matter of days. Not completely normal...I still need some therapy for what still exists of the HOCD...but better than I have in MONTHS. MANY MONTHS.
So, okay. If you take nothing else away from this post, take this:
*******YOU HAVE GOT TO STOP REASSURING YOURSELF. THIS IS A CRITICAL MUST. STOP WHATEVER IT IS YOU'RE DOING THAT REASSURES YOU. GET AWAY FROM THIS BOARD FOR STARTERS. GET BACK INTO REAL LIFE AND DO WHAT YOU CAN. BUT ____STOP____ REASSURING YOURSELF. I SWEAR TO YOU THAT IF YOU DO THIS, YOU WILL FEEL SO MUCH BETTER. JUST GIVE IT TIME.********
Okay. With that, I think I'll say farewell for a while. I've only been here a short time, but I feel like I've made some good friends. I'm still right there with everyone else on the HOCD stuff - I still feel anxious sometimes, I still get panicky, I still get the thoughts. Just not as much because I'm doing what I have to do to get better. And that's what I'm going to keep on doing.
Best of luck to everyone who has to deal with this AWFUL affliction. I don't know about all of you, but this is the worst thing I've ever gone through. Hands down. There were nights that I was actually hysterically sobbing on the floor of my shower...punching the side of my head...screaming "GOD HELP ME!!!!!!!" and seriously contemplating closing the drain and drowning myself. I'm not kidding you guys...it was that bad. And that was just one day. And now, weeks later...just from putting forth the required efforts to get better...I'm eagerly anticipating my sexy girlfriend coming over in a while so that I can pounce on her young, soft, lean, warm body and enjoy her.
You guys WILL get better - you just have to face these fears, bite the bullet and TRY. And, like I said in my first point - learn to have faith. None of this would be possible without Jesus Christ in my life.
Good luck to everyone...
Take care and God bless all of you!
-Hyperfocus