Attention those who have had/have HOCD. Does it improve with abstaining?

Just want to know if anybody HOCD has improved with abstaining from porn. Ever since I was a little kid I was obsessed with females and their naked bodies. I remember seeing a woman's body for the first time as a kid and being so amazed and aroused. I started watching porn young at age 12. But I had your average straight young male fantasies about my middle school teacher this lady I had a crush on. From the age of 14-18 I must have made out with over 50 plus girls and had sex with 15. I never doubted my sexuality and never saw dudes in a sexual way. I even went to an all guys high school and during puberty where hormones are raging I never once thought about another guy sexually. Not one time. I also did not "fear being gay". I had no problem with gay people and never had intrusive gay thoughts. I was confident in my sexuality and never thought about if I was straight or gay. It wasn't a problem for me. I just knew I liked girls and that was that.

Over those years I continued to watch porn daily. Pretty much everyday. I never focused on the guy and only focused on the girl. Bottom line I was OBSESSED with sex and females and ass and tits. Then at age 19 when I was watching a video one day I seemed to notice the guy more in the video and I guess this is when desensitization started to seep into my porn viewing habits. It was almost as if I had seen so many naked females at this point that I needed something weirder to shock me. I didn't get off to the thought of the dude in the video but it freaked me out that I actually noticed him and was turned on by the constant penis slamming into the vagina. This is when the first thought of "what if I'm gay?" Came in. Ever since that day I have been obsessed with the idea that I might be gay even though I have never kissed another guy, done anything sexual with another guy and don't have the desire to do so. I just can't get these thoughts out of my head. They won't stop day and night. Every time I try to fantasize now the chick in my head is replaced with a dude. I feel anxious now around other men when Inn the past I never thought twice about it. I have now become socially anxious. I don't go out anymore. I use to love going out and getting with girls and now I don't.

I have also just got over a 2 year relationship with a beautiful girl. I lost her due to my porn addiction. A lot of the time through our relationship I  had to watch porn earlier in the day to get in the mood or I would have to remember porn scenes in my head to get aroused. I would have weak erections and ejaculate fast. This ultimately would lead to part of the end of our relationship as I figured she wanted a guy that could make love to her better. I live with regret everyday that I couldn't stop my porn addiction years ago so I could have given her what she wanted. She is now off with another guy and my life sucks now. She was my bestfriend and my first love and she's gone. I know I'll move on eventually but nothings worse then living with regret.

I don't know where to go from here. I literally went from a guy that was confident, socially outgoing, confident in my sexuality and wasn't anxious around other dudes to a guy that never goes out, is extremely sensitive to any comment about me being gay or feminine, low self esteem and generally miserable. Although I play and act like I am fine on the outside to people, inside I am slowly suffering. I just want these thoughts to stop. To stop beating me up making me feel worthless, stripping me of my masculinity and attacking my core identitty. Will rebooting help me with this?

Have you stopped porn?  I mean that's the first step I would take.  Things will fall into place after that.

MOST people lose their first love, it happens.  You'd be surprised how people in your life tend to circle around.  If you two really had a unique bond, then who knows what the future will bring.  God always have a plan for you and he NEVER gives you a burden he feels you cannot handle.  I have my suspicions about god, like many of us do, but I do believe in fate and that everything happens for a reason.  You'll find that reason eventually.  We all do.

Gay people KNOW THEY ARE GAY.  If you think you are straight, but keep having htese weird gay thoughts, then you are STRAIGHT.. you just have weird fucking thoughts, probably due to porn.  Once again, GAY PEOPLE KNOW THEY ARE GAY. 

"Comming out of the closet" is not really realizing you're gay... It's ACCEPTING IT, and allowing others to know.  That's not your case.  You "feel straight" but are just clouded with these weird thoughts... Do you see the difference?

Gay people "feel" gay.

You sound like you need a reboot brother.  Get on it!  No mas porn.

I had a streak of 65 days hardmode. There were a few weeks in the streak where I literally felt cured and could feel my brain starting to slowly balance out again. My HOCD was almost nonexistent. When I had the thoughts there was no anxiety or fear response hence I didn't dwell on it and it didn't repeat and loop in my head as often. I felt great for a few of these weeks. They came and went and the other time during hardmode I felt MORRE anxiety and a worsening in thoughts. So eventually I relapsed because I fell victim to doubting the process. I was overcome with temptation.

The good thing I felt glimpses of recovery in both my HOCD and my PIED. I would be getting a rock hard erection to just the thought of this woman I knew without having to stimulate myself or look at porn for arousal.

I think you just answered your own question.  Don't doubt the process, but you will need to get a full 90 in at least.  Understand also that getting a porn induced dopamine high through extreme forms of porn that do not look like what you see yourself as will always be a temptation.  You just have to recognize that and say no to it.  You CAN get it back, but it will take time, effort, and sacrificing your dopamine addiction. 

I had problems with this. To the point I just accepted I was Bi-sexual (I'm not). A month of rebooting and my sexual tastes and desires have completely changed. I have M'd once during my Reboot so far (without porn) and noticed that my brain, no longer needed any shock value what so ever and the once kinky fetish of thinking about guys now does nothing; my tastes now reflect my emotional, romantic state, which is heterosexual. It's very distressing when the thought of kissing a guy or holding hands makes you feel really uncomfortable, whilst at the same time you are having sexual thoughts about guys.. It messed with my perception of my own masculinity and like you, I was really sensitive about people saying things that suggested I wasn't manly etc, which made me feel really unsure of myself.

Give up porn for good, get back to who you actually are. 

Greg1994 Same here. I remember when I was 13 just seeing a girl during PE would get me rock solid that I had to go to masturbate in toilet. I remember first porn I saw was woman giving a guy BJ,literally I almost came just looking at it for 10 seconds. Nowadays you can show me most crazy gangbang with super slutty woman and my face would be -__- and dick would be dead. This refreshment called reboot is trully important for us.

I mean I really cant go on like this with brain fried by so so so much porn...

those feelings are just part of withdrawal symptoms and, in the end, they'll fade away.

Alright guys. You have to explain this one to me. What the hell is with all this HOCD non-sense. No offense, but go on another forum if you're struggling with that non-sense crap. This is a porn recovery forum for straight man, not for struggling lost teenage boys wondering if a dick is all they ever wanted in life. This is a forum for strong, straight men who got sucked in the porn trap and are looking a way out.

If you have HOCD problems, then your life must be messed up. Maybe you never had a father figure and never sought models or mentors in life. That's another issue. But has nothing to do with porn recovery overall. Please understand this.

larry said:

Alright guys. You have to explain this one to me. What the hell is with all this HOCD non-sense. No offense, but go on another forum if you're struggling with that non-sense crap. This is a porn recovery forum for straight man, not for struggling lost teenage boys wondering if a dick is all they ever wanted in life. This is a forum for strong, straight men who got sucked in the porn trap and are looking a way out.

If you have HOCD problems, then your life must be messed up. Maybe you never had a father figure and never sought models or mentors in life. That's another issue. But has nothing to do with porn recovery overall. Please understand this.

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Hey man, if you haven't get that part from this guy's post, chances are you haven't seen where porn and HOCD links. It's quite simple, actually:

I have also just got over a 2 year relationship with a beautiful girl. I lost her due to my porn addiction. A lot of the time through our relationship I  had to watch porn earlier in the day to get in the mood or I would have to remember porn scenes in my head to get aroused. I would have weak erections and ejaculate fast. This ultimately would lead to part of the end of our relationship as I figured she wanted a guy that could make love to her better. I live with regret everyday that I couldn't stop my porn addiction years ago so I could have given her what she wanted. She is now off with another guy and my life sucks now. She was my bestfriend and my first love and she's gone. I know I'll move on eventually but nothings worse then living with regret.

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Porn liberates dopamine >> real life interactions with women feels less pleasuring as addiction grows

It reaches to a point where their attraction is numbed, almost non-existant. That may give space for the arising of intrusive thoughts about one's own sexuality. Other common causes are emotional numbing. Breakups makes you feel really less interested on investing emotionally on someone, specially if it's a really deep relationship. (More info on porn & HOCD here)

I had HOCD for six months and yeah, rebooting is essential. But so is treatment. And that latter part you can also do it for yourself

People often forgot that it's an obsessive-COMPULSIVE desorder, that has twofold roots: both on the obsession (intrusive thoughts) and its rites to get rid of it (jerking off to porn). These thoughts are nothing but cognitive distortions, like seeing the world with blurred lenses. Cutting porn is halfway to the solution, because the obsession part is still there.

There comes the time where the HOCD sufferer must FIGHT BACK.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy works a lot in these cases because you get taught to understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy thoughts, and how fucked they are. Once you learn, you may start replying to them, making them lose strenght until they are meaningless. What fucks you up in HOCD isn't the thoughts, but the impacts they cause on you.

Believe me, normal people have these thoughts through their day and that just doesn't stick because it isn't coherent with their reality. They got solid ground to deny it. All that you'll do is make your ground firmer.

My suggestion is: start studying CBT. There's some good books that cover this subject in general and can teach you how to recognize these kind of thoughts. I'd suggest you to start with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. I don't think it's that expensive nowadays, but if you're into piracy you may easily find it online on torrents.