Shaun Flores
Shaun Flores ...
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How did you feel after you were diagnosed?
Truthfully, I would say I was actually terrified. I looked at parts of my life and I realised, wow, I really wasn't performing and being at my best because of what was happening inside. And it was this new journey that I was going on to understand the illness that I lived with, why my mind was a certain way, why I wasn't able to do certain things the way I did, why I was avoiding things. Why, for example, even things such as waking up early on mornings I struggled with because I had such intrusive thoughts every morning that I was like, oh God, I don't want to be awake. So I would try and delay waking up early just so I could avoid certain things and let my body rest for as what I believed to be as long as possible. So it is been a terrifying but also quite exciting journey. I quite often say that there's this circle that I draw, and I've learned in coaching where the small circle is your comfort zone, and outside of the comfort zone is the learning zone. But you want to have the stepping stones to get towards your learning zone. So whilst I was not terrified back then, I would say now I'm in a very different place. I'm in a space where I'm just trying to rebuild my life again and take myself back from the Brinks of wells, suicidal ideation, depression. I was in a very bad place, so I'm in a very different place now.
What is Sexual Orientation OCD?
So sexual orientation, OCD is the worry that you might be gay or the worry you're attracted to the same sex or you're having these thoughts around it, but there's nothing almost proven that you're gay. So that's the best way for me to explain it. Or someone who's gay can also have sexual orientation OCD. The worry that they're straight or the worry that, for example, you might be attracted to different things or different people, that's how typically sexual orientation OCD manifests. So it's obsessive intrusive thoughts about your sexuality? Everyone questions their sexuality, I think once sometime in their life. And I think in society we allow women to question their sexuality because it's almost accepted that a woman can be bicurious or bisexual. But whereas I think it affects guys a little bit differently is I think our sexuality is supposed to almost be the singular narrow vision. Whereas if a guy wants to explore it or he has questions, it can create obsessions and intrusive thoughts about, am I this? Am I that? So I think there's a wider idea at play, but that's mainly sexual orientation. OCD.
How did you feel before you were diagnosed?
The best way to describe how I felt was I was a storm, probably within a hurricane, so there was so much going on in my head, but everything else in the world felt almost as if it was impacting me. I couldn't do the simple things. I couldn't do the basic things. I was just in a constant state of panic, anxiety, and just, I couldn't do anything. To be very honest with you, I was barely functioning. I was barely existing. I felt burdensome. That is the best way to describe it. This sad weight came over me all the time. Waking up was hard. Sleeping was hard because I was like, I'm going to have to go to bed with these forts. Everything was just arduous. It was an arduous task to live, and I wasn't living. I was existing.