another denial or ocd thread..

Hi guys, please bare with me this is going to be a long one and is going to get a bit graphic too. I’ll start by saying I’m 30 years old male and having doubts and major anxiety about my sexuality, identity and what have you. I’ve trawled endlessly for stories that match mine, whether people don’t want to go into the details I will has yet to be seen and yes I understand that everyone’s story is different.

I’m going to go through my history here and end with where I am now..

Since I can remember i’ve always had a strong attraction to girls, earliest memories were collecting pictures from lingerie catalogues etc. I had a couple of “playing doctor” experiences with 2 boys in my youth but also with girls too.

As a child I could never seem to go to the toilet properly and had to have my stomach pumped various times, My first childhood memories in fact I remember crying as my dad had to put the suppositories in my rectum. Really painful memories. In fact all my childhood memories are getting knocked out, being hospitalised in some way, having my stomach pumped etc.

Any way at some point during adolescence I got obsessed with putting the shower head up my donkey and cleaning myself out, I used to put a lot of stuff up there, toothpaste tubes, pencils, I once pumped a balloon up there too. The most bizarre thing I did was put a garden newt and slugs in a bottle and try to get them to crawl up there.

All during this time I had a drive to approach girls but was very shy and unsuccessful, plus we had a very odd attitude in my house to sex and my mum told me I should stay away from girls because they had diseases (this was at primary school age).

I didn’t have many opportunities to socialise with girls during secondary school as I went to an all boys school, there wasn’t any same sex attractions there either. All of my fantasies were in private, biggest crushes were Buffy and Kelly Brook at the time! Outside of school it would be girls in my parent’s social group but I was waaay too shy.

I was getting extremely frustrated about not having any sexual oppertunities into after puberty, pornography and buffy had to suffice. I started to look around for sex on the internet. In those days it was yahoo chat, and looked around for girls to have sex with. I noticed that there were none but that guys did advertise on there and started to fantasise about that. I remember wanting to act out what I’d seen woman do in the porn I was watching at the time which was brutal gangbangs so I had it in my head that I wanted to have that done to me and started to search for it. Bearing in mind I was 16, I’m glad that this did not happen. Eventually I did meet with a random guy on there, I got f***ed, it was pretty lame, the situation scared me a lot but I went through with it and there you go.

Shortly after this experience I met my first GF. She was also shy like me, so pretty and cute. Took me a while to get the guts to ask her out and then I did. First kiss was amazing, Sex was great, I remember us just hugging on the bed absolutely ecstatic. However, I contracted glandular fever a little while after seeing her and the thought popped in my head that I may have contracted HIV from that guy I slept with (yes I understand this is stigma) but the fear was irrational since there was protection. I built a fear that I had given her the virus. This in turn started a lot of health related Obsessions. I’ve convinced myself I had cancer a few times, tumors, testicular, brain, lung and was going blind another, also that I had Bi Polar disorder too. This isn’t surprising since my mother has massive health related anxiety I’d say OCD to an extent but never diagnosed.

I had a HIV test and obviously nothing was there but I still doubted the diagnosis for a while. Now this has been laid to rest.

I broke up with GF after a couple of years and had a few relationships here and there. I had one who cheated on me and I become suicidal and had to go on medication, I had another who was self harming.. This put me off relationships for 7 years, I had casual hook ups with women here and there but very much felt more secure alone with pornography. I started counselling during this time and changed my entire life, I went from a dead end job to university, managed my depression and so on. We even explored my childhood sexual experiences.

After university I went travelling, I fell in love with a girl on the road. I really didn’t expect for this to happen it just did. After 7 years I let me guard down. I never had sex like that before. It was fireworks, I was head over heals for this girl and then I got the message, she had met another guy. This destroyed me and sent me into depression and anxiety again. I was heart broken. I actually suffered a tropical illness on that trip that I suffered with for a year last year I could barely walk and sought the services of a counsellor in my local area 2 of these counsellors were unavailable so I picked this third guy. On his site he said that he deals with LGBT issues, this didn't matter to me I thought a counsellor is a counsellor who have to do the same training. So I went to him and explained my situation about being depressed, my physical problems and all the stuff that had gone down in the last few years. Second session in and he just comes out and says "I understand that this may be a source of anxiety for you and given what I DO, where do you see yourself sexually?" At first I was really perplexed by this question as I’d explained to him about my hurt for the girl I had previously loved. I Said “I’m attracted to women but I did have some experiences in my childhood and teens”. His face kind of lit up at this point and he said “ahh I thought I was getting my wires crossed here”. At this moment I started to majorly freak out and thought “has he just made me realise something about myself that I haven’t realised?!” I started to question him back and said, “yeah but I’m attracted to women, so what’s that all about?!” He made a reference to bi sexual people and said kind of sarcastically “ I’m not saying those people don’t exist” and then started to talk about heteronormativity and stuff.

That night I had the worst panic attack of my life, my body literally felt on fire, I just didn’t understand what was going on. I felt massive rushes of anxiety in my genitals to the point of it feeling like an erection.

I went back to see him the next day with a few questions. I just couldn’t understand him because he was talking as though he’d made a diagnosis. He also told me that he’d seen people in psychiatric units with physical health problems such as mine with no cure. So I got the idea in my head that I would be a cripple unless I come put and started to ruminate on that.

I went home and thought about this as logically as I could. My spidy senses were saying get the f**k away from that guy he’s dangerous especially with that remark about Bi people. But in my head LGBT people, especially affirming therapists are supposed to be open minded? This was until I read about the “gay straight or lying” stance on sexuality. So I contacted my old therapist who I’ve been seeing until this point.

So for the last year now I’ve being trying to get to grips with this but I can not really think properly due to the anxiety. I couldn’t understand why I was primarily straight but had these experiences in my childhood?! I also had worked with my gay friends for ages and even played some music at a gay sex club and didn’t even consider it!? I never felt uncomfortable around them or anything and would often stand up for their rights etc.. This just made it more confusing to me. It’s like gay porn can turn me on, so can trans porn basically anything can get me off. But When I try to masturbate to an actual guy it doesn’t work. Like I don’t respond to the male figure at all it is just floppy. I get these groinal responses to Nacho Varga on Better Call Saul so I think, “ok so he must be my type” so I get up a picture of him and try to imagine having sex with him and again it’s just floppy.


More disturbing is these other thoughts and compulsions that have started during this time. Such as harming people, children and animals. For example there is a cat that comes into our house, I love that cat but sometimes a thought will come into my head saying “snap it’s f***ing neck” and I feel an urge to do so. It also happened when I was at a friend’s house and we were all admiring his dog again the feeling of “cut that dog in half!” leaps into my brain.


The most disturbing one is some themes around children. I get very anxious around them and because I am checking my groin it feels like I am being turned on by them. Last month when my anxiety was high my cousin was drinking from his sipping cup and the sound started off this groinal thing. I thought, what the hell is wrong with you! The more anxious I get the more visions pop into my head of abusing children.

So I’m not sure what to do, my current therapist is a great person but I’m not sure if I need to be committed or anything. I just want all this to stop and go back to how it was before I saw this previous therapist. What a cruel twist of fate.

I’ve thought about killing myself multiple times when the anxiety is bad and my head is racing too much. But the only thing that stops me is the thought of my family, so I started to google ways in which I could make it look like an accident instead.

My character has completely dissolved in front of my eyes. I haven’t genuinely laughed at anything for a year and I recognise myself less in the mirror day by day.

I don’t even know what I’m asking here or whether I even want to know the answer so thoughts?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.