Hypnotherapy could help you to be free of HOCD. 

What is HOCD?

I’m truly sorry if you’re here because you think you might be suffering from HOCD. It’s something I work with on a fairly regular basis and yet it’s one of those OCDs I never found time to writing a page about. It’s time to put this right in order that people seeking hypnotherapy for HOCD can be reassured that there is help available. 

HOCD is characterised by an obsessive and overwhelming fear that you might be homosexual. It brings problems such as circular, panicky thinking patterns which can never be argued or reasoned away. OCD will always come back with an answer, whatever rational defences you attempt to employ. Reassurance from others (if you even dare to ask for it) will never prove to be helpful for more than a short period of time, for HOCD will always reply with a “yeah, but what if…” In fact, the more you try to argue with an OCD, the more you become stressed by the thoughts which plague you, the stronger those thoughts become. It’s a nasty vicious circle which pulls you in, ever deeper, with its barbs. It’s all you can think about and there seems no way to find any peace at all.

HOCD brings with it a never-ending feeling of anxiety. In fact, anxiety is the bed-rock from which OCDs of any kind emerge. Thoughts and the physical feelings of anxiety feed back into one another. “What if I’m never free of this? What will happen to my relationship? What will people think of me? ” Such thoughts about the life-changing consequences of having to admit to being gay / homosexual will transform themselves into a never-ending sense of doom and despair. 

HOCD can also come with certain compulsions. Some people will begin to watch gay porn, or to look at members of the same sex, in order to check whether doing so evokes any feeling of sexual arousal. Of course, as you might guess, obeying the urge to perform such compulsions is merely worsening the problem.

The good news is that OCDs of any kind can be helped by a combination of hypnotherapy, mindfulness and psychotherapy. I’m an adult psychotherapist and am trained in the use of hypnotherapy in order to accelerate psychological change. I’m also a Child and Adolescent psychotherapist, so am qualified to work with any adolescents who might also be suffering from HOCD. 

If you or a loved one is suffering from this form of OCD then I’m qualified and experienced in helping them to be free of this issue, once and for all. Get in touch and we’ll discuss how hypnotherapy, mindfulness and psychotherapy, together, can offer relief from the symptoms of HOCD and a solution. There can, of course, be no guarantees and yet there are many people who have seen their symptoms reduce and disappear. You or your loved one could be the next.

Call me on 07786123736 or email me at paul@resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk and we’ll talk about your situation in more depth. I look forward to hearing from you.

What if I really am gay, though?

If you were truly gay then you wouldn’t be suffering like this. History is unfortunately littered with poor souls who couldn’t live their lives as they would have liked. From Greta Garbo to Alan Turing and to Rock Hudson, plenty of people had to pretend to be straight in times gone by. They didn’t, however, suffer the symptoms described above. OCD tends to make you think that you are (or will do) the very things you’d most hate to be or do. It’s a vicious condition and you deserve to find a way out of its clutches. There’s a big difference between being in denial of being gay and suffering from HOCD.

 Why not use CBT for HOCD?

CBT is the go-to therapy for NHS and its providers. This is partly and often because it’s quick and easy (and therefore cheap) to train people to deliver this form of therapy. You don’t have to have trained for four years to deliver CBT. 

I don’t believe that CBT is the best therapy for the more obsessive forms of OCD (those which primarily trouble sufferers with thoughts) because OCD is impervious to reason. HOCD always argues back and is thoroughly irrational. It will never be satisfied with logical argument and the very attempt to reason with it will only ever strengthen it in any case. No, HOCD needs to be dealt with differently, in my experience.

How could hypnotherapy help my HOCD?

Hypnotherapy, when utilised by a fully qualified psychotherapist, can help with a great many complex conditions. OCD happens when a person who is already predisposed to anxiety becomes fixated upon a particular idea or fear. The first step to being free of this OCD is to learn how to dull the emotional response to the thoughts and emotions which arise from the thoughts. For this, I use a combination of psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and also mindfulness. This helps the client to care less about the thoughts and to step back from becoming anxious about being anxious. As I said above, the more you panic at the thoughts and about the anxiety, the worse they become. The first step is to reverse this process.

Hypnotherapy can help you to respond to the thoughts differently, to care less about them, to greet them with a stone wall of silence. Hypnotherapy can also help you to relate to the anxiety differently. Anxiety is the base of all OCDs. Bring the anxiety down and the intensity of the thoughts comes down with it. Hypnotherapy, mindfulness and psychotherapy can all be combined to achieve this goal.

It’s not easy. This isn’t going to be about me doing all the work. I’ll teach you how to grind away at this OCD until it’s under control and then extinct. You can do this and I’ll be more than happy to help you all the way.

There’s also the question of ‘what lies beneath’? OCD came about because of anxiety. If we just deal with the symptoms (the OCD) then the danger will be that you’ll one day (when stress overwhelms you once more) go back to this form of OCD, a different form or another coping strategy altogether. We don’t want that! hypnotherapy, mindfulness and psychotherapy can help you to regulate your emotions better for the long term. These therapies, together, can help you to increase your confidence and to deal with any elements of your past which led you here to begin with. I work holistically. We need to work together to deal with the problem and also with the causes of the problem, to leave you feeling happier in yourself and in your life in general. You can do this and I’m here to help.

Get in touch and we’ll talk about things in greater detail

If you’d like to talk about how we could work together in order to deal with your HOCD, once and for all, then get in touch! You can call me on 07786123736 or simply email me at paul@resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk. I have lots of experience with working with people suffering from pretty much every form of OCD under the Sun. You can learn to be free of it and I’d very much like to help you. Give me a call and we’ll discuss how, when and where this freedom could begin to take shape.