If you’re here because thoughts about your sexual orientation won’t leave you alone, let’s slow everything down for a moment. I’m not here to label you. I’m here to help you notice a pattern. When OCD latches onto identity, it isn’t gentle; it demands certainty you can’t realistically give. Once you can see the loop, you can step out of it.
I’ll use the terms SO‑OCD and HOCD interchangeably so you can recognise yourself in the language you’ve seen online. If you’d like a more in depth overview before reading this article, my main guide is here: HOCD (SO‑OCD)
Start with the feel of your day. Do you wake up already scanning for “signs,” mentally checking yesterday’s conversations, who you looked at, how you felt? Do ordinary things—seeing someone on a screen, walking past a stranger, choosing a thumbnail on YouTube—turn into tests? You get a few minutes of relief after analysing or asking for reassurance, and then the question resets. That resetting is important. It’s the brain learning, “When I check, I feel safer,” so it asks for more.
When I talk about symptoms here, I’m not just listing thoughts. I’m looking at domains. Obsessions (sticky doubts). Compulsions (things you do to feel safe). Body sensations and what your mind does with them. Attention habits. Cost to your life.
In the obsession domain, the content is usually some version of “What if I’m not who I think I am?”, “What if I’ve been lying to myself?”, “What if this feeling means everything changes?”. People often tell me the questions feel high‑stakes, time‑sensitive and impossible to answer to 100%. That pressure cooker feeling is a sign we’re dealing with OCD, not ordinary exploration.
In the compulsion domain, think about what you do next. Do you run mental audits of past crushes, first kisses and which way your eyes moved in the gym? Do you ask your partner or friends to tell you who you are? Do you seek out videos or pictures to “measure” your reaction, or avoid anything that spikes you? Do you compare today’s feeling with last week’s and treat that comparison as data? Do you spend long stretches on forums, convinced the next thread will finally settle it?
Let’s address the groinal response, because it frightens people. Bodies react when attention locks on; anxiety can create sensations; novelty can too. A reflex is not a verdict. When the knee jerk happens in a doctor’s office, nobody decides what it “means” about the kind of person you are. Your groin can have reflexes as ordinary as a knee. What keeps the loop going is not the sensation but the story you tell yourself after it: “This is proof. I must fix it.”
Notice attention habits. Does your focus narrow as soon as a trigger lands? Do you get stuck inside your head trying to work out what the thought says about you? Do you lose track of what you were actually doing—tea goes cold, emails half‑written, you miss your bus stop—because you were “just thinking it through”?
And then the cost. Are you postponing living until you feel certain? Avoiding people or places you’d like to be around? Putting your partner in the position of therapist? Measuring your relationship by how reassured you feel today?
Here is a HOCD self-test, it doesn’t diagnose anything but useful as a screening tool. Read each line and notice what happens in your stomach. If several of these describe your week, you’re likely looking at an OCD loop rather than a discovery about who you are.
I keep checking my mind or my body to see what a moment “means”.
Relief only arrives after I analyse, ask, or test—and it doesn’t last.
I treat groinal sensations or the absence of a feeling as evidence.
I avoid people, programmes or places because they make the argument in my head louder.
I ask for reassurance and feel calmer for a bit, then I’m back at the same question.
I postpone ordinary life—work, study, affection—until I feel certain.
I keep changing the rules: when I get an answer, a new angle appears and I start again.
If those lines felt uncomfortably familiar, the next step isn’t to hunt for a sharper answer. It’s to change what you do in the presence of the doubt. We do that with practical therapy tools. CBT helps with the meanings that make your mind sticky—beliefs like “If I can think it, it must be true,” or “Real love means 100% certainty all the time.” ERP teaches your nervous system that you can have a thought or sensation and not perform the ritual that keeps the loop alive. You’ll see both of those in my main HOCD guide, and I’ll walk you through how to begin.
People often ask, “When should I get help?” My rule of thumb: if this is eating time you care about, straining your relationship, keeping you from your values, or if your mood is sinking, it’s time. In the UK, you can talk to your GP or self‑refer to NHS Talking Therapies in many areas. I’ve written a short page on what to ask for and how to navigate it so you don’t have to do that legwork alone: NHS Talking Therapies & OCD: what to ask for. If you’re in immediate crisis or feel unsafe, contact NHS 111 (mental health option) or Samaritans on 116 123; in an emergency, call 999.
Before you leave this page, pick one tiny practice. Name the loop when it shows up—just that. Or delay a ritual for a few minutes and notice that urges rise and fall even if you don’t feed them. Or do one small thing you care about with the doubt sitting beside you: send the text, finish the paragraph, drink the tea while it’s warm. Those small choices, repeated, are how people get their lives back.
When you’re ready for the next step, go to the HOCD (SO‑OCD) guide and then into the treatment pages from there. I’ll keep it simple and practical.
