The “Am I gay?” question points to two of the most challenging concepts for the anxious mind to accept: that love is a choice and that there are no guarantees or certainties regarding the outcome of this choice. Love is a Choice and There Are No Guarantees And if there’s shame about this, if you don’t know that experimenting with or fantasizing about the same sex doesn’t mean that you’re secretly gay but is a normal part of healthy sexuality, the natural impulses are pushed underground where they mingle with shame and emerge, sometimes years later, as anxiety. But many heterosexual people – more than you would ever guess – have experimented sexually with the same sex or fantasize about the same sex. Most people are oriented toward preferring one sex over the other. So when it comes to sexuality, most people cringe to think that their own orientation cannot be folded inside a tightly locked box.īut sexuality is just that: it’s an orientation. In our ego’s desire to delineate life into nice, neat, manageable packages, we like to say that people are either this or that: either black or white either Democrat or Republican, either gay or straight. If you’ve studied human sexuality or examined your own with an observing and non-judgmental eye, you know that sexual orientation exists on a spectrum with most people having some bisexual tendencies. What separates this thought from the other common intrusive thoughts is that there is, in fact, an element of truth to it. I worked with her the same way that I work with all intrusive thoughts – understanding that it’s a flare sent from the inner self designed to get your attention and then unpacking the feelings and beliefs that the thought is covering up – but it was only when I started hearing the same thought from other clients and courageous forum members that I understood how many people perseverate on this question. I neglected to include one of the most pervasive thoughts that plagues the anxious mind: “What if I’m gay?” When a client first shared this thought with me several years ago, I thought she was an anomaly. The thought is so far from reality that it’s almost laughable, except that it’s not funny at all because my clients believe the lie which, of course, creates massive amount of anxiety. The irony about people who are prone to intrusive thoughts such as these is that they’re among the most gentle, loving, sensitive, kind, creative, and thoughtful people you’ll ever meet. Thoughts like, “What if I’m a pedophile?” or “What if I’m a mass murderer?” or “What if I contract a deadly disease?” or “What if I don’t love my partner enough (or at all)?” parade through their minds day and night without reprieve creating a state of perpetual misery. Many of my clients suffer from the hell-realm of intrusive or unwanted thoughts.
![why am i gay in the future tosh.o skit why am i gay in the future tosh.o skit](https://i.imgur.com/6Bke3pG.jpg)
In a post entitled, “ The Architecture of Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts“, I wrote: