Abstract Quantitative studies have demonstrated the relevance of a “feared self” in the maintenance and development of sexual orientation obsessive-compulsive disorder (SO-OCD). The current pilot study demonstrates how the “feared self” – i.e., a set of qualities one fears to have or become – can systematically be traced in language by operationalizing it as evaluative stance-taking. Online sexual doubt narratives written by self-diagnosed sexual orientation OCD men (n = 299) and “questioning men” who doubt their sexuality without referring to OCD (n = 105) were compared with the mixed method corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The analysis focused on the co-occurrence of adjectives and determiners with the noun “thought(s)”. Self-diagnosed men used significantly more adjectives than questioning men. Qualitative results showed that the evaluative polarity of “thought(s)” was negative for both groups of men. While self-diagnosed men always avoided the feared gay self, few questioning men ambiguously embraced a gay/bisexual identification. Moreover, while both groups tended to deny ownership of “thought(s)” by doubling the usual use of any other determiners over the pronoun “my”, more self-diagnosed men followed this tendency. Potential therapeutic applications of these findings, and future interdisciplinary research avenues are discussed.