So, I’ve dealt with OCD all my life. I first realized I had it after watching That’s so Raven with my family when I was about 10 and I started obsessing about having visions of the future, but I had had obsessions before that, that I had realized that it was OCD. I am a very compulsive thinking and a perfectionist, I don’t like leaving anything to chance. I also tend to overthink things and “philosophize” about things. I think about the meaning of life a lot and how everyone conforms themselves to fit a certain image that they consider to be themselves and something presentable for the outside world, and how almost everyone spends most of their time in their head thinking. Last summer, shortly before turning twenty, I started pondering what makes a boy a boy and a girl a girl. I thought about mannerisms and, especially, clothing. I have never felt the urge to dress up like a girl, yet I started to think about whether or not the only reason I’ve never felt this desire is because I was raised as a boy, because clothing in and of itself really has no meaning. Then of course, my OCD (which had been dormant for quite some time), started kicking in, and I started thinking “ well, it doesn’t matter, anyways, because you care way to much about what other people think to ever break these societal norms and wear woman’s clothes”. My first reaction to that was that I’d never even felt the desire to wear women’s clothing, but then my brain went on to say “you wouldn’t even try it”. And then I started to obsess about the fact that I care so much about my image that I would never be able to try out dressing like a woman, even though I didn’t even really want to…
Well, anyways, I also LOVE languages and think a lot about how language influences our way of thinking, and then all of a sudden I started thinking about the difference between “he” and “she”, and my head started telling me “You’d never ask anyone to say she to you because you’d be too worried about what they think”. I honestly had NEVER had that thought before. For the first time shortly before turning twenty, and I didn’t even want to be addressed as a she. I had never questioned being addressed as “ he” and have always considered myself a boy/man. Yet, the thought wouldn’t let me go that I would never be brave enough to “try being a woman”. Anyway, long story short, so began my obsession with being worried that I’m secretly a transsexual/could start to want to be transsexual.
This fear fear was especially scary because I actually am gay, and misinterpreted my homosexuality for several years as OCD (or at least I wanted to think it was OCD). That started though when I was 12, not 20… I came out first as bi and then later as gay, and I got the thought “now just wait a bit and you’ll be coming out as trans”, and that definitely helped to spark the fear.
But, anyways, I had this fear for maximum a few days during the summer, and then it stopped and I didn’t really worry about it for several months. I even became friends with a W to M transsexual person at school and didn’t think twice about it. Sure, the thought would pop in my head once in a while when I saw something that triggered the thought, like transexual people on tv or reading something about transgendered people, but it never “stuck” like OCD thoughts tend to do. I did continue to obsess about me not living my life to the fullest because of what other people thought of me, i.e. not dancing on the streets or starting to sing randomly in the bus, etc. I also got sick several times during the first few weeks of school (I’m a freshman at a university in Germany) and worried that I caused it by being stressed, that I was going to get mortally sick and not be able to live my life to the fullest, that I was going bald, etc. I also OBSESSED about speaking perfect German at school, accent and everything. Pretty much I had a very stressful first semester of school.
Anyways, over Christmas I flew back to the U.S. and was relieved to be able to relax for a while, but then all of a sudden the transexual fears came back. And they’ve stuck around for about the past three weeks. And they terrify me. I feel like I’m losing myself all over again and I don’t even know who I am. I’m constantly looking at girls and asking myself if I’d rather be like them, imagining people referring to me as a “she” and seeing if it bothers me, picturing myself losing my penis and having a vagina and boobs and seeing if I like it. I love being a boy and it scares me so much. At first when I imagined these things it felt very strange and wrong, like it wasn’t me. But now maybe I’m getting used to it and it’s not such a shock factor when I imagine it, and I’m worried that I’m slowly getting used to the thought or subconsciously “reorganizing” my mind by thinking about it myself to want to be a girl and could wake up one day and secretly really want to be a girl. Especially when I imagine being a girl and it doesn’t totally freak me it out, I get really worried. I feel like I’m losing myself.
I could go on about a lot of other factors and things, but this is already super long. Can somebody help me. It’s a mixture of fear between being worried that I can’t operate 100% without restricting myself a bit due to my concern about what other people think of me, not being able to live life to the fullest and feeling like I’m losing grip of who I am and not knowing who I am anymore. What should I do? These thoughts are terrorizing me. I just want to go back to knowing who I am. Ever since I came to terms with my sexuality when I was 18, I’ve only wanted to be in a relationship with another guy and for him to be attracted to me (as an attractive male). Now I’m worried that one day I’ll want to be a girl and no guy will ever be able to love me. What do I do?
P.S. My whole childhood I’ve never even thought about being a girl, never even crossed me mind. The only things I can think of my doing that could be considered “gender-bending” would be one time when I was like five and I put on a dress and ran after a guy and was trying to kiss him (and I don’t remember wishing I was actually a girl there). This was one time! And then when I was like in 6th grade when I cut my underwear to make it look like lingerie (top and bottom) and tried it on in the bathroom. I don’t remember wishing a was a girl there either, I was really just experimenting. I did lots of weird things back then too, like reenacting Jesus’ crucifixion with clay figures…
Anyways, please help! Thanks