while i don’t have much to say usually except that i like the articles, i am glad though in ur last reply on ur HOCD blog u mentioned ressurance seeking behaviour & provided a link to this article.

While i understand how it relates to HOCD,& movement in the p**i* being a reasssurance seeking compulsion & why, I am not sure i have grasped this concept completely.

under the 3 types of reassurance mentioned , reassurance seeking from others is perhaps where we fall. People of my religion, e.g. Mormons . we have been raised this way, to make sure anyone we interact with,we don’t hurt their feelings or offend them , intentionally or untentinally. This works just great when we interact with our type, coz we r doing the same rituals to each other, however where i have started to struggle with is when i come across some people of other faith. This form of ocd was mentioned to me by an expert, however it was not explained so i brushed it off. However after reading the article, i can c where a close friend of mine falls under this form of OCD, as her reassurance seeking behaviour doesn’t end at me saying “habibti i am A O K! not offended, we good!”, the reassurance goes on and on. But i fail to c where i am caught up.

i like the idea of a reassurance book, but can’t figure out how i would use it.

this is my pattern.-Usually if i talk or write to someone, as a learnt and enforced habit, always write a line of apology in the end. ONLY IF the person is really hurt AND letx me know, it is my duty to clairify my point coz more than likely my comments if harsh were not intentinal, and then to apologize again. And that’s where it ends.

however where i have trouble is when i don’t get a reply at all to something i believe ANYONE would expect a response , my mind automatically comes to the conclusion that the person hates me, while i don’t mind being hated, as u can’t control ur own thoughts and feelings let alone trying to change someone elses about u , i would just like to know why. knowing y, is this a compulsion? What would i do with that info, not sure, first would surely apologize for whatever i said that hurt em, other than that i really think i would move on with my life , just accepting the fact that there is one more person who is not fond of me, coz my life doesn’t revolve around pleasing people, but just being genuine (in every sense).

I guess i am not really exposed to people outside of my group, so i really don’t know if that is how the outside world is, or if it is just me. i believe this is excatly what i would like to know.

i would appreciate it if i could get a response here, coz while not responding would perhaps be a way of not feedign into my reassurance seeking compulision, if that is what i have, however i am not writing for reassurance, but writing to genuinnly understand this ocd and where am i goin or actually thinking wrong here? Very soon i will be exposed to more people outside of my group, and it would really help to learn about either the people outiside or my perticular form of ocd. i apologize for the lenghty email.

thank you.

Sounds like OCD to me. You describe a lot of mental rituals aimed at trying to get certainty and reassure yourself that you are not gay. The issue of whether you have ever been in love with a girl is only confused by the ocd. Many straight people, in fact ALL people question and debate within themselves if they have ever really loved another person. Only your ocd tells you that this must be investigated to prove you are not gay.

My recommendation is that you seek treatment for your ocd. If there is no one trained in doing cognitive behavioral therapy for ocd where you live, you might seek treatment online elsewhere. The therapists at the OCD Center of Los Angeles often do therapy via phone or skype for those who cannot access it locally. In the meantime, I would also recommend reading some books about ocd to help you get a better understanding of what you are struggling with. I think a good book for you to start with would be Freedom From Obsessive Compulsive Disorder by Jonathan Grayson.

Sorry for my poor Englisch (from belgium), but Im desperate to know if I have OCD or not. On my 16th my doubts about my sexuality began. As suddenly as they started they also dissapeared. It occured on 2005, 2006, 2010 and now. Always in periods with a lot of stress. Now I’ve always been depressed and I know that I can’t rest my mind – Im a thinker in a negative way.

It all started with a story I heard about a person who had his comming-out. I thought – pfew, thank god Im not him. But at the same time I thought, why are you so sure about your own sexuality? At that moment I thought I never had been in Love with a Girl. And there it al started. I began checking myself. Fantasizing, which didn’t work, watching pornographic material which mostly didn’t worked, but sometimes it did and than I got scared. Checking out guys on the street which causes strange feelings – with every person i saw – in my head/stomage/genitalia which I can’t place. It’s the same feeling when I roll my eyes. Checking my live-time history to certain points when I felt strange but didn’t know what the cause was.

And last week It all started over. The same rituals as when I was 16. But I still don’t get aroused by it (sometimes it happens). Sometimes I do feel/think it’s good and I think that in in the “closet”, but 5 minuites later I’m already in doubt.

Everywhere I am I need to look for confirmation and it is destroying my live. I’m scared to get out of my home. Can’t get my thouhts on my job. Sometimes I even think that I’m in love on a boy, but when I look to an other boy I get the same strange feeling. Am I getting arroused on boys? That can’t happen in a blink of an eye right? Or is my mind tricking me?

As soon as I wake up I’m drowned in negative thoughts. It only stops when I’m in a deep sleep. Sometimes I want to accept this thoughts, but as soon as I’m thinking to get in contact to people of the same sex I’m getting scared.

My doubts are based on these strange feelings, but I think they aren’t realistic. But then again there’s that unwanted thought: Was I ever in love with A girl? I do have realionships and I enjoy every moment of it. But that unrealistic thought gives me a doubt. But why do I get jealous as a boy trying to seduce my girlfriend, that’s love right or isn’t it? But then again, once a girl broke up with I was depressed for 3 months. The feekings are the same which I experience now, only with an other mind-set.

I think my mind is tricking me cause deep in my heart I know what I am, but some unwanted thoughts in my head give me doubts over and over again. What to do? Do I really need to see If I get in love with boy, or is OCD tricking with me

Presumably you married him for some reason and this reason probably has something to do with shared values — the kind of values that would make a response like “you’re nuts, take a hike” extremely unlikely.

OCD affects 2-3% of the population (and that’s just the ocd that is clinically diagnosable). It is not a rare disorder and has nothing to do with being crazy. If you got educated about your ocd and got cognitive behavioral treatment, then you would be able to educate your husband and enlist his support in your effort to stop the compulsive reassurance.

For the sufferers and partners of sufferers dealing with compulsive reassurance seeking, I think making a personal contract can be very helpful. This can be written or verbal, but it needs to specifically give permission from the sufferer to the partner to deny them reassurance about specific obsessions and for the non-sufferer to use their judgment in deciding what is and what isn’t reassurance seeking.

Another tool I have found helpful, particularly with younger sufferers and parents is a reassurance book. This works by having the OCD sufferer resist the urge to vocalize the reassurance question, but write it in a notebook with a limited number of entries per day (no more than 5). The parent (or identified reassurance provider) can then respond to these questions at the end of each day in written form in the book. Then they can gradually reduce the number of entries. If any question is written more than once, the responder simply writes that the question has been answered. It is important to keep the responses short, direct, and objectively honest. If the answer is “I don’t know,” then that is what should be written.