What it’s like having sexually focused OCD obsessions: An excerpt from Australian author Penny Moodie’s memoir, ‘The Joy Thief’

“One of the devastating things about OCD is that it makes you believe that you don’t have any agency in your life.”

The first time I met Dan was at a French restaurant in Williamstown when I was in Year 10. We were both studying French, and the teacher had organised a special excursion so we could practise ordering pommes frites and escargots with a waiter called Bill from Altona North. I’d never spoken to Dan before, as he was in the year above me.

He was as comfortable conjugating French verbs as he was barrelling a footy across an oval. He was also extremely kind, so he may as well have been a magical unicorn. I found myself sitting opposite him at the restaurant table, and it wasn’t long before we were chatting and placing bets on who could eat the most snails without dry-retching.

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He had a supreme confidence that made him seem like he was floating just slightly above everyone else. It was the kind of confidence that can only come from being a decorated athlete at an elite private school AND having a brain. As an introvert who had always wanted to be an extrovert, I was drawn to and fascinated by him. We were two extremely naive kids and, unbeknown to us, we were about to hop on a relationship rollercoaster that would clumsily stop and start for the next ten years.

Because I was so worried about being labelled a slut, and seeing as though no couple could have a sexual experience that wasn’t then proclaimed to the entire school by a town crier, I was very clear about ‘going slow’ with Dan for the first couple of months of our relationship. But as soon as we started to become sexually active, I began to obsess about whether I was pregnant.

It was literally impossible, because we hadn’t had penetrative sex, but facts never get in the way of a good obsession! It wasn’t as if I didn’t understand how the mechanics of reproduction worked. I did. I’d even pinged myself in the eye with a condom in Year 6 Sex Ed, when we were told to practise putting condoms on bananas. But logic didn’t have any traction.

If I was being sexually active in any capacity, then maybe some semen had found its way into my uterus? The risk was small – microscopic, in fact – but the potential fallout seemed too great. For months I was so fearful of becoming a teen mum who would have to somehow fit my school dress over a baby bump that I bought dozens of pregnancy tests and would only feel any sense of fleeting calm once I saw the single line show up on the white, plastic stick.

I now recognise, after years of therapy, that these fears were more about my identity – and shame associated with sexual behaviour – than pregnancy itself. However, at the time I was just worrying about the fear that was dangling in front of me, no matter how insane it seemed. Eventually, this fear of being pregnant disappeared. But in a classic obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) move, it only disappeared because it was replaced with another fear: that I was gay.

Now, I want to make it very clear that I don’t believe there’s anything shameful about being gay. Even though, at the time, words such as ‘gay’, ‘homo’ and ‘dyke’ were still being savagely flung around the schoolyard, I knew in my core that it wasn’t bad to be gay. I grew up in a progressive household that never questioned different ways of being in this world. It wasn’t so much the being gay that scared me, it was the thought that perhaps I had no control over who I was, or who I was going to be with. I was truly happy in my relationship, and the thought of having to end it scared me.

I remember being on holidays and mindlessly flicking through the TV channels. ‘Cricket… no, tennis… no, loud lesbian sex… what?’ I’m still unsure how I landed on lesbian porn on free-to-air TV during the day, but that’s beside the point. Because of my long-held worry about contracting AIDS, as well as my obsession around pregnancy, anything sex-related generally filled me with anxiety.

Suddenly being confronted by two naked women passionately making love made me slightly anxious but also a bit curious. I watched it for a while, a little confused as to why I was finding it so erotic. But, seeing as though I wasn’t the only one in the house, I quickly clicked back to Richie Benaud claiming something was “marvellous” from the commentators’ box at the Sydney Cricket Ground. I went about my own business until a thought thrust itself into my head so unexpectedly, I almost fell over: ‘You must be a lesbian’.

Wait what? No. Nah, I don’t think so. Am I? And again, just like when I first experienced the thoughts about having AIDS, I remembered playing ‘mums and dads’ as a young kid, with other girls. So, I must be gay. Case closed. Knowing what I do now, after years of therapy, it’s obvious that I was experiencing thought-action fusion (TAF). This is when you have a thought and immediately believe that just having the thought is equivalent to carrying out the action. Because I had the thought that ‘Maybe I’m a lesbian’, I skipped 100 steps ahead and believed it was inevitable.

In the first few moments of this bourgeoning obsession, I started to experience the fight, flight or freeze response: I tried to ‘think’ my way out of the thought (fight), I judged my inner experience as ‘bad’ or ‘unwanted’ (flight), and my body was tense and anxious (freeze). As had happened multiple times before in my young life, I’d soon begin to develop behaviours in response to this intimidating thought. Behaviours that would dictate my life, steal my presence and threaten my sanity.

One of the devastating things about OCD is that it makes you believe that you don’t have any agency in your life. You can’t make decisions; they’re made for you, and you just need to follow the path unfolding in front of you, whether you like it or not. And more often than not with OCD, the path is leading somewhere that you don’t want to go. Most people’s teenage years are pretty fraught. I’m very aware that, compared to many people, I was extremely lucky. I had a loving family, close friends and a privileged life.

However, having sexually themed OCD obsessions during a time of sexual discoveries and experimentation was particularly overwhelming and disorientating. Anyone who’s ever been to high school knows that most things tend to revolve around sex to some degree. Who do you have a crush on? Who did you pash on camp? Who had a threesome at the formal afterparty? Testosterone, progesterone and oestrogen fly around madly like seagulls at a beach barbecue.

Any time a thought about being gay popped into my head, instead of noticing it and moving on, I’d try to disprove the theory to myself. If I was watching a film and there was a scene with two girls kissing, I’d usually have to spend hours thinking about why I wouldn’t actually want to do that in real life. I’d replay the scene in my head, but insert myself as a character, trying to work out what sorts of feelings I’d get if that was me. Or I’d rewatch the film repeatedly, checking how my body reacted each time.

You can imagine how tedious and exhausting this is. You end up tying yourself in knots, because your mind can imagine anything. Confirmation bias comes into play, with your mind focusing solely on the information that supports the hypothesis you’ve already established. Because I was spending a lot of spare time with people – friends, boyfriend, family – I’d often have to remove myself from social situations so that I could perform the mental compulsions and try to make sense of the thoughts flying around my brain…

Of course, thinking my way out of fundamental questions about my identity and future were fruitless. Occasionally, I’d reach an agreement with my brain and feel a few minutes or perhaps even an hour of relief. But as I now understand, performing any kind of compulsion will only reinforce the obsession, guaranteeing that it will eventually rise back to the surface with even greater force.

This is an edited extract from The Joy Thief by Penny Moodie, published by Allen and Unwin. Purchase a copy here.