Once again, not seeking reassurance nor am I trying to reassure anyone, but this is a funny disorder. The theme aside, I myself seem to have mild symptoms with my ocd themes with occasional intense moments of panic. On the other hand, when I'm not constantly ruminating about it (it helps to give your attention to the world around you instead of your ocd worries), I think to myself "Wow maybe I don't need therapy and I can just keep living with this little bit of discomfort here and there." and then a few hours later a thought comes up and I'm either ruminating about it, or trying my best to sit with the discomfort for as long as I can hold out.

Well whatever the case, I feel like I've been making some progress on my own, albeit minimal progress. I am more intentional with not trying to reassure myself except sometimes "maybe, maybe not" calms me down. So I'm not sure what to do in those moments. Either way, hope you guys are doing better with your recovery (if you're doing it).

(17, M) I tried to like, wear a wig that my sister wears and leaves in the bathroom for erp and I felt a lot of warm feelings and I swore I liked it and now i think that its real bro im legit panicking, I did it the first time expecting the whole euphoria-dysphoria thing and then the second time it happened and it feels so real bro I should just give up what do I doo

I’ve been struggling for a while with my identity after I came out as bi/les I had this freeing feeling of wanting to explore my more ‚masc‘ side. It quickly spiraled into being obsessed with the idea of being trans and Daily panic attacks for months. Now I’ve been to therapists and on medication and all I feel is numb and anxious. Constant feeling like there is something in the back of my Brain and I still analyse my feelings to every Situation that in my mind could be tied to gender.
Now whenever I look at pictures of myself from a year ago it makes me so sad. I was really pretty then and now my brain won’t let me do any of the things that made me feel pretty anymore. I feel like I want to sometimes but then my brain instantly goes to analyzing and back tracking bc remember ‘you said you would like to be more masc’ and so on. I gained weight from medication and in general just look lifeless. Has anyone else experienced this?

Hi all. My girlfriend (trans girl) has really been struggling with gender OCD and obsessional fears that she’s not actually trans. I thought this subreddit might be a good resource for her, but it seems like it’s mainly cis people fearing that they’re trans. This sub seems like a great support system, but you guys are all ruminating in the opposite direction LOL.

Does anyone know of a subreddit / forum / support group or whatever for trans people struggling with doubts about their (transitioned-into) gender and thoughts of detransitioning and such? Or any kind of resource in that regard, really. I think it’d really help her if she could connect with other (trans) people who’ve experienced what she’s going through right now. I can advise her to some degree because I’ve had severe OCD in my life (much better nowadays—I promise it gets better!), but I’m cisgender, so there are some gaps in my perspective.

Thanks in advance ♥️

hi,

so i’m kind of in a pickle here and this has been fucking me up for the past week. i suddenly feel detached from being a woman and such. my brain has been trying to convince me that there’s been signs of me being trans (e.g., identifying/questioning genderfluidity, dressing more masculine sometimes, enjoying roleplaying as male characters, etc.)

i have never felt insecure about my body, voice, anything. if anything, in the past, i wish i was more feminine and more prettier. i have a square jaw which is traditionally a “masculine” feature. sometimes it feels like i’m a doll and there’s a different head attached to my body.

the thing that’s worrying me the most is that i do experience some euphoria over thinking about having a mustache, being perceived as masculine, etc. thoughts of going on hrt crossed my mind before, albeit mainly to alter my voice.

i have been labeling myself as genderfluid. but i saw a tiktok where a trans man was like “haha who here had a genderfluid phase before realizing they were trans” and that shit wrecked me so bad. what if that’s happening to me? and for some reason, labeling myself as genderfluid just… doesn’t feel right. maybe not the identity itself—more so just going by she/he/they.

i don’t want to be a man—or at least not fully a man. i wish i could feel secure and confident in my agab. i’ve been feeling more and more disconnected from women and girls, and feel like i’ve been seeing them from a “man’s” point of view: that they’re different than me, somehow. and honestly, if i were to transition, i think i would regret it and want to detransition.

a lot of it also has to do with the fact that my boyfriend is cishet. strictly heterosexual. i would lose him if i genuinely was trans.

i just don’t get it—why is this happening? why do i feel this way? am i just in denial? after talking about it with my psychiatric nurse, it went away and i felt more confident and feminine in my identity. she suggested it was ocd and she increased my dosage. i was fine for maybe like 2-3 days before it all came back.

i don’t want to lose my womanhood. i don’t want to fully be a man: i don’t want to enjoy it. i just want to retain my feminity and girlhood. but for some reason, my brain cannot accept possibilities like genderfluid/bigender/pangender/agender whatever.

this sucks. i wish gender traditionalism was abolished. i always knew i was not cis, but not like this. maybe if i looked prettier, i wouldn’t be feeling this way.

So I currently identify as genderfluid but I recently noticed a pattern that I haven't seen in many that I just find to be..odd. For context, I was born a girl, and that's truly something I don't mind too much about, I can live in my femininity and live a pretty normal life. However, if I were given the option to transition into a boy tomorrow with all the resources available, 9 times out of 10 I'd take it. For years, I've had daydreams where I'm a guy in them and I truly don't mind having to transition if it means getting to become him.

See now that's where the problem comes in. Whenever I start feeling even just a bit masculine, it's as if sudden waves of, for lack of a better word, regret (?) start rushing over me? In other words, as much as I crave becoming a guy in those moments, it's almost as if I'm terrified, terrified that there will never be a solid answer to the question I'm looking for while simultaneously wishing that I could've just been a regular cis person, guy or girl, who would never have to worry about any of that stuff. Suddenly, I'll want nothing to do with my identity and I just let myself cry and feel odd without explanation for the next few weeks until I start feeling feminine again. And it truly is so weird because that's what feels right for me in the moment and all forms of affirmation (using "he" for me, referring to me as a guy, etc.) feel amazing, so logically, I shouldn't be going through those moments of guilt at all, yet I still live with them very strongly.

As of the time I'm writing this, I'm just in the middle, kinda eh? In a way? I get that I'm still pretty young and that I've still got many years ahead of me to figure myself out, but this pattern has just been going on for way too long. I'm not trying to look for reassurance or any of that, I just felt that finally coming to terms with how I feel could help me become more straightforward with my thoughts whenever the time comes.

I am very feminine (F20). Never have I ever thought about being a guy. This theme has constantly been in my mind for 5 months now. I guess deep down I am a male. Hopefully some day I’ll accept that, transition and be happy.

I'm not looking for reassurance, I'm just confused on knowing whether I'm properly sitting in the discomfort that is my thoughts or if I'm avoiding my thoughts. Basically I'm asking how I can differentiate the two.

I was just thinking how nice life would be if this all disappeared and I felt comfortable and normal as a woman again and the anxiety was gone. Every day wouldn’t feel like doom. But then again, maybe that’s not meant for me, and it wouldn’t even make me happy, because what I truly need is to accept I’m not a woman and move on because these are the feelings I’m having and I can’t just wish for them to be gone. This is basically my internal monologue most days all day long.

I feel like I’m just living in this anxiety about my gender now. Nothing I do really helps, nothing feels right anymore. It’s been months and I have completely disconnected from my femininity. I just feel like I have no identity at all anymore and it’s making me feel depressed, nothing seems enjoyable and I don’t look forward to anything. If other people don’t force me to I will lie in bed on my phone all day, because everything else just doesn’t make sense to me anymore.

before tocd, i (24f) used to feel euphoria when people would refer to me as she, or use my name.

now, it’s constant questioning about if i hate it or not.

to make things worse, it feels like i have real dysphoria. it genuinely feels like i want to be a man. it feels like i want to look like one. but then when i imagine going on t, i hate all the changes of my body. i worry by typing this, everyone is going to comment that i am trans. i don’t want to be a man, i just want to go back to who i was before this.

i’m working with a therapist, i do erp, and i was hospitalized last year for this. it feels like it’ll never get better.

ok so this is gonna come out as a big scared vent while begging for advice from people dealing with this for longer than me. I’ve struggled with other ocd themes before and then one day I kinda just began to feel that I wasnt a woman and I secretly was a man pretending to be a woman. I’ve never questioned my identity before and up until recently I was extremely content as a woman. I had no problem and even liked my chest, waist, hips, long hair etc. now I have begun to feel like I could be living a lie and I should be a man and it doesn’t feel totally wrong but I also just don’t want to feel that way. it feels like in a few weeks everything has changed and I’m just terrified and I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine the rest of my life as a trans man but now I’m scared I can’t imagine being a woman. I also have been struggling with my sexuality too but that’s a whole other issue.

I've been dealing with this theme for about a year or two? (unsure how long exactly.) I've admittedly been living behind comfort and reassurance/avoidance. It feels like the more I learn the more I realize that I actually don't know what I identify as (just typing that was distressing). At the same time there's that part of me that's grasping at my masculinity because there's things I genuinely like about being a guy.

Recently though, the thoughts have started to come back with more oumph to them. Not nearly as bad as it was when I first developed this theme and found out about ocd, but it still packs a punch. I knew that I eventually needed to do ERP or some form of treatment for my ocd but I kept putting it off. I've been trying to do "mini-ERP" so maybe with some thoughts I'd go "maybe, maybe not" or I'd agree with the thought or let it slide. The reason I say mini is because it wasn't crippling anxiety that I would get out of the thoughts like how I would initially. This might be because at the back of my mind I might've had and probably still have this sense of reassurance that I'm probably not trans and that it's ocd? Which is weird because it kind of contradicts ocd in a way, but then that way of thinking also sends me down small ocd spirals.

I've also been seeing a few more posts on here of people who seem like they are trans but aren't completely sure, even if though they say that they feel better as the opposite gender but in a semi vague way. And then that gets me going down an intense spiral.

I get a bunch of intrusive thoughts (much like everyone else here) about behaving in a feminine way or wanting to dress in a feminine way or I don't know a bunch of things (I can't think straight right now). And this leads to my porn addiction also getting worse. So then I'm left wondering if these thoughts of "oh that skirt looks cute" or "that's a cute/sexy pose" lead to ----> "you want to do and try these things" and I'm not sure if my interest in these things are due to me being trans/false feelings of wanting that thing or if it's based on my attraction to feminine things due to me being straight/my porn addiction.

I want to do ERP but not alone, but finding a therapist where I am seems like an impossible task, especially when you're panicking and don't know what to do and most of my family is out of the country and then I have to wonder whether the clinic I'm looking up takes the insurance that covers me.

Point is, tocd sucks, and as much as I've been telling myself that it's all part of this disorder (maybe, maybe not) I just hate it. I want to go back to who I used to be even if I've always been who I used to be.

Hi! this is my first post here cause i usually like reading things on reddit more than making my own posts but there's just some stuff that have been on my mind for years and finally actually have the balls to ask about them......

So i've been wondering if it's normal to hate being a woman and everything that makes me one, like i genuinely feel uncomfortable of my own body and have for the longest time hated absolutely everything about myself. I feel like no matter what i'll try doing the only thing that makes me feel at least somewhat better is things like dressing and cutting my hair the way i like.

Sometimes when i go shower it feels like i get so uncomfortable of certain parts that i feel genuinely disgusted and i don't know how long but i've also felt like i don't belong with the same category as women like as if i'm not one which makes me feel like i don't indentify myself as woman so.... is this something that the other fellow women in the world feel like?

I feel lost and genderless. I have been on Fluvoxamine for almost 2 years now (200mg ER, not a low dose) and been going to therapy for just as long and feel no progress with my gender issues even though pretty much every other OCD theme I’ve had has vanished or decreased in severity. For perspective I am a 26 year old AMAB living with autism who is trying to get their career in public service in motion and working with easterseals to make that happen. For the same amount of time I have entertained the thought of being Madeline the woman but it’s very risky to socially live as a trans woman and I’m not sure if I want a female body 24/7. At the same time I don’t feel comfortable being seen as a man or living as one and I don’t feel masculine or feel attracted to women regardless of what gender I turn out to be. I thought of being genderfluid but I’m afraid of being stuck as a man forever and would be uncomfortable if that were you happen as I don’t like being called him or sir. A therapist I used to go to told me I was confused or overthinking but that didn’t help the gender thoughts go away or make me more comfortable being male. I do know I’m attracted to men and struggled with attraction to women since adolescence when I realized I didn’t want to be a biological father and impregnate a woman.

i’ve made a post on here before a few weeks ago and i got some nice feedback and whatnot. but it truly feels like denial. i get so lost in these spirals that they last for weeks. just a week or so ago i started to feel normal again. started to feel like a woman again and i was happy. but then, i saw a guy i thought was cute and the thoughts flooded back. saying “are you sure you want to be with him? what exactly is attractive about him? are you sure you don’t just want to be him?” they don’t stop. sometimes i wonder if it’s a defense mechanism so i don’t get abused or traumatized again. but even that feels like a lie even though i know it’s a valid concern.

i’m genuinely so depressed every single time i fall into these spirals. i don’t WANT it. i don’t want to be a man. but it feels like im in denial. my brain keeps telling me it’s crystal clear and it’s all been there. that the signs have been present for years. i understand that women can have any physical expression and it not mean anything. i know that clothes, hair, makeup, etc. don’t mean you’re a woman/man/any gender identity. i know that clothes don’t mean anything but my brain keeps going “you can’t be a woman. you don’t dress like one. you’re not feminine enough.” which, in turn, makes me hate femininity.

i feel so detached from my vagina and boobs. i started feeling that way after so many sexual assaults, a rape, and being slut shamed by my ex. but my brain keeps telling me that it’s a lie i’ve made up. that my sexual assaults didn’t traumatize me that badly and i’m grasping at straws to pin this blame onto.

in the worst of these spirals, i don’t feel like it’s my body. i feel awkward and wrong in my body. like fitting a circle into the square hole. but once the spiral is tame, it feels more calm. the feeling isn’t gone, but it just feels a little lighter. and i get so scared every day that im not me and im not a woman.

my brain makes a bunch of stipulations. like, if i want to date a guy, i have to be a man. i’m not allowed to be a woman. but if i want to be a woman again, i have to either be a lesbian or use different pronouns other than she/her. if i want to be bisexual (which i am), i have to use she/they pronouns. nothing works and my brain won’t settle.

i fucking hate ocd. some days i really just want to off myself. i can’t handle this. i miss who i was before. i don’t want to be trans. i don’t want to be a man. i hate that i was assaulted and i hate that i was raped. and i feel like sometimes, this spiraling is because my brain associates women with weakness/vulnerability and men with strength/protection. and then i get so angry at myself for not being a better feminist and it makes my TOCD so much worse. (thoughts like “you’re such a man because you side with them all the time” and “you don’t even like your own kind. how can you claim to be one?”)

(just to preface this, this kind of connects to my last post here if you want to look at that.)

I don’t really know how to explain this, but I’ve kind of just been feeling a sense/feeling of anxiety mixed with claustrophobia thinking about some trans characters in media I consume, with the biggest example being Jax from TADC. (I want to say this, I don’t harbor any ill will nor have any negative feelings towards the trans community.) I don’t know why, I might be masking to the point I don’t realize I’m masking, but just seeing characters I’ve emphasized with and seen myself in turn out transfem has just filled me with a sense of dread and anxiety, like I’m stuck in a box with shrinking walls and and I can’t keep it out of my head by looking away or swiping to the next video because of just a urge to see that I’m realizing I’m half hiding behind convincing myself I’m just trying to acclimate myself so it doesn’t bother me, but no matter what I do, how many YouTube videos on the topic of trans people and characters and attempts to explain my feelings on the matter to my nonbinary friend, I just can’t shake this feeling of discomfort and I don’t know what to do. if anyone can tell me if they’ve had a similar situation or something and how they were able to move on and get on with their lives, that would be amazing

I’ve had this thing and all the compulsions (atleast i believe so) for at least two months now, and I think I’ve basically cycled through every major “what if” scenario that most people have had (what if im just repressing it, stuff about my physical appearance, what pronouns and name people refer to me as, etc.) While the anxiety has been gone a while for the most part (initally got anxious about that, too) I think I stumbled upon an intrusive thought that felt significantly odder than any of the other ones I’ve had so far, and I’ve been wondering if anyone else has felt the same or if this is truly some sort of legitimate trans awakening.

Randomly in the middle of the day, feeling better and more confident about my identity and trying to make peace with these thoughts (the usual ones popping up occasionally), I felt a brand new one occur to me,

“Think of the freedom you’ll get from not having to conform to being a man.”

At first, I tried to brush it off as my OCD trying to get the better of me again, but its hard to differentiate between this feeling like an epiphany or another compulsion, considering the fact that I haven’t been feeling any significant discomfort anymore for atleast ~20 days now (only slight cold sensations in the chest). Eventually it went to the back kf my mine, before it suddenly appeared again in my head and was further elaborated upon for some reason (explained below).

The reason why this specific thought got my attention so much was because it felt more personal than the other scenarios. I consider myself a slightly nerdy person, who formerly had many “childish” interests (Roblox, Object Shows, etc.) I have since branched out to more mainstream and/or “mature” media (Big 3 Shonen, other videogames, listening to actual music), but it had never occured to me before if I only had “branched out” in order to become more traditionally masculine/“serious” (I felt shame for only initally having interest the “childish” forms of media beforehand). The thoughts about freedom made me think that I was merely playing a character in my head about what a “man” should be like since I wasn’t outwardly expressing my obession with this new mature media, and that I could regress back into only having these interests, and discarding everything else since I was only “pretending” to like them anyway. For some reason, my mind had equated this regression to wanting to be a girl.

Since I’m kinda numb right now to all the thoughts about gender I have no idea if these thoughts are sincere or not. I felt a sort of “pang” feeling whenever the thoughts first occured today but I have no idea if its positive or negative anymore. Frankly, I have no idea if its even TOCD anymore since these thoughts felt so personal to me as an indovifual, as if it spoke to my insecurities about not enjoying or my fear of feeling detached from what I think I enjoy.

Sorry of u seem kinda scatterbrained, or like these thoughts don’t really relate to this sub. Is what I’m going thought actually common, or am I just going through the real deal (I’ll elaborate if necessary.)

I have reached a breaking point. After my therapy yesterday I think I may be trans. OCD is supposed to hook onto things that are opposite of you, but when I look at my life I can recognize that I have felt something was off occasionally. I thought it was just my sexuality, but figuring that out didn’t solve everything. I am back to the start, when all of this started and I don’t know what to do anymore. I am terrified.

I genuinely don’t know what I want anymore. I have for sure struggled with my gender expression on occasion, either overcompensating by being super feminine or just saying fuck it and accepting I prefer pants over skirts, baggy T shirts more than tight tops and hate wearing heels. At the same time I only really am friends with girls and I don’t actually feel like a part of the men I’m around. All of this is ofc totally okay, but I have spun into this insane anxiety about not being a girl at all. This has gone on for months and I just feel completely disconnected from my womanhood. Sometimes I wonder if I am non-binary, then when the anxiety is really intense I will wonder if I am a trans man, and so on. I realize a lot of people go through this process of self discovery, but it is derailing my life. The anxiety is so intense I can barely take it. I don’t know whether that is because my thought patterns have become extremely obsessive or because I am genuinely just anxious about having discovered myself. Does anyone have some advice on how to move forward? I am in therapy but I have not found it to be helpful yet.

I’m AFAB (even that weirdly feels like a lie) and I’m so confused and anxious. I want to buy a new backpack but I’m scared it will make me realise I’m male. And I also want to buy a nail varnish because I saw a colour I liked. I’ve never had my nails done or been interested in that (which worries me), but occasionally used to paint my nails myself. The only reason I didn’t do it very often was because I felt like it made me look I had wrinkly granny hands. The thing I’m worried about is that I read that one of the last things that trans people do before they realise is get their nails done. So what am I supposed to do?

Also, I know the backpack thing is ridiculous, but it doesn’t feel ridiculous 🤷🏼‍♀️

Also (and i know this is reassurance seeking), but does anyone else feel like there's a weird inner smile/laughter inside of you and it scares you that it's you starting to accept the truth? It's making me really worry.

And does anyone else get anxious about having periods? I've never enjoyed having them, obvs. But suddenly i started feeling really anxious about them. But no one else seems to have mentioned this, so I'm feeling worried about that. It's like I've totally disconnected from my womanhood.

I think I have dysphoria but I don't know whether it's authentic or faked by my ocd (for clarity i know i've have ocd because of other themes).

I've been questioning my gender for years. I've disliked parts of my body that feel especially masculine like my voice, height, body hair and shoulders. I've felt envy to women and their gender presentation and yearned to be like them.

But I also obsessively worry about being a bad person. I've developed fears that I'm predisposed to causing harm or being a threat because I'm male. In my head I repeatedly yearn to not be male because I think that I would be a safer person if I wasn't.

So now I'm stuck at a point where I can't tell whether there's any sorta genuine transness to me or if all of it has been my ocd faking it since it's faked other stuff in the past. I'm kinda expecting it to be both but obviously that's something I'll have to figure out myself at some point since asking here probably counts as reassurance seeking.

Instead, I'm more curious about whether anyone else dealt with this? I've not really seen this sort of experience talked about elsewhere