HOCD vs Denial: What’s the Difference?
People with HOCD (sexual orientation OCD) typically experience intrusive thoughts, anxiety, doubt, and compulsive attempts to gain certainty about their sexual orientation.
What is denial?
Denial, by contrast, is a psychoanalytic concept referring to unconscious avoidance of painful truths. Because denial is unconscious, trying to “prove” whether you are in denial often becomes an endless mental loop rather than a productive exercise.
Why the Need for Certainty Keeps You Stuck
In practice, repeated checking, rumination, reassurance-seeking, and urgent attempts to “figure it out” are more consistent with anxiety-driven obsessional thinking than with genuine self-discovery. Keep in mind, however, that questioning or exploring your sexual orientation is not inherently a sign of OCD. The issue with HOCD is usually the compulsive need for certainty, repeated checking, and anxiety-driven rumination surrounding the question.
If you’re wondering whether you have HOCD or if you’re in denial about your sexual orientation, you’re not the first person to wonder about it. Does it feel pressing or urgent that you figure this out right now? Is that feeling of urgency leading to anxiety and impassioned, repeated efforts to deduce what your sexual orientation truly is? If so, one smart approach is to acknowledge that anxiety and rumination don’t help, especially when you’re seeking clarity about something. So you might as well try to address your anxiety first, before coming to any firm conclusions about whether you’re gay or straight.
One way to try to lower your anxiety has to do with something called uncertainty tolerance (or intolerance). Tolerating uncertainty is one of the characteristics of people with lower anxiety levels. It’s especially relevant for people with anxiety who ruminate. So ask yourself: why the need to answer this question *right now*? Use this as an opportunity to practice tolerating uncertainty. The more you practice tolerating uncertainty, the better you’ll get at it. And the better you get at it, the less anxiety you are likely to have.
So think of the present occasion as a choice – you can choose to try harder to figure out whether you’re gay or straight… OR, you can practice tolerating uncertainty. How? For example, you could tell yourself “I’d really love to know whether I’m gay or straight, but at this moment I’m not sure. I don’t like it, but for the time being, that’s the situation. And I can stand it, even though I’d rather not.”
How Do I Know If I’m in Denial?
Because denial is, by definition, unconscious, trying to logically determine whether you’re “really in denial” often turns into an endless process of rumination. The harder you try to achieve certainty, the more trapped and anxious you may become. Since denial operates outside conscious awareness, efforts to consciously “figure out” whether you’re in denial are ultimately bound to fail.
What Happens When You Keep Trying to “Figure It Out”?
This kind of repeated mental effort is known as rumination (or, in the case of someone with OCD, mental compulsions). Rumination is associated with anxiety or depression – it’s thought to cause or worsen these problems. It can strengthen negative beliefs about yourself, the world, or other people. It can also dominate your time and prevent you from engaging in the meaningful and rewarding activities that can make life enjoyable.
So whether you’re gay, straight, have HOCD or not, rumination is likely to make your life less enjoyable and to make you more depressed or anxious. Has it had that effect already? Take a moment and ask yourself how your efforts to answer this question have affected you thus far. If you feel they haven’t been helpful, then consider making a commitment to yourself to interrupt rumination when you notice it happening.
Why Reassurance-Seeking Makes HOCD Worse
Many people with HOCD repeatedly search online, ask AI chats for certainty, mentally review past experiences, or test their reactions to others. While reassurance may temporarily reduce anxiety, the doubts often return quickly. This leads to even more rumination and checking.
How to Interrupt Rumination
Easiest way
Distract yourself. Go outside, go for a walk, do something different with your body.
Better way
Notice the thoughts that tempt you to ruminate. When they come up, try to just notice them without giving in to the temptation to “figure out” whatever the thoughts would have you try to figure out.
Best way
Practice tolerating uncertainty. When you notice the thoughts arise in your mind, tell yourself “that may be true, or it may be untrue. I just don’t know, and I’m not going to try to figure it out right now.” (For more on how to practice this kind of self-talk, see our post on the 4-Step Maybe Method for handling intrusive thoughts.)
CBT treatments can help too
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the treatment of choice for OCD in general. Exposure and response prevention (ERP), a specialized form of CBT for OCD, often focuses on reducing compulsive rumination and increasing tolerance for uncertainty. This is much preferable than trying to achieve perfect certainty about your intrusive fears.
Example of HOCD Rumination
Here’s an example: Jessica has always considered herself a heterosexual female. She’s only had relationships with men. Recently, however, friends have made comments to her that have made her anxious. They’ve talked about attractive women and Jessica has wondered whether she just assumed incorrectly that she was straight. CONSIDER MENTION OF COMPHET HERE. In the past few weeks, she has been thinking a lot about this and it’s been upsetting for her. She can’t seem to stop thinking about it, and thoughts on the topic seem to come up constantly – which makes her doubt her sexual orientation even more.
Specifically she can’t stop thinking about a recent interaction she had with a female friend. The friend was wearing an outfit Jessica liked, and Jessica complimented her on it. Ever since then, she wonders what the “real” reason was that she liked her friend’s outfit. When the thought came up, Maybe I only liked her outfit because I’m sexually attracted to her, and am in denial, Jessica found herself thinking through all the relationships she’s had with men in the past, trying to determine if she was truly attracted to them or not. Her hope was that finding the answer to this question would tell her if she was, in reality, gay or straight.
After working with a cognitive-behavioral therapist, Jessica has decided to start looking for ways to interrupt her rumination. When thoughts arose like the one described above, Jessica told herself, maybe I was truly attracted to my friend, but maybe I wasn’t and just liked her outfit. I just don’t know for sure, and that’s OK – I am going to try to set this aside for now.
By practicing this strategy repeatedly and patiently, Jessica was able to change her mental habits and reduce the time she spent ruminating.
The Bottom Line
The question of whether you have HOCD or are just in denial is an understandable one. It’s not an inherently unhealthy question to wonder. The problem is that people who ask themselves this question tend to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the answer. They often describe it as “going down a rabbit hole.”
Whether you’re gay, straight, bisexual, or are unsure, we know that rumination is likely to worsen your mental health and your quality of life. If you’d like help implementing the strategies above, please contact us today — we are happy to help.
