18+ Please I’ve posted about this before, but I really need advice or someone who has been in the same place. Earlier in 2021 when I was 18 I downloaded dating apps at first just to have fun, see how many matches or people who were interested, but then not long after it turned into a thing of sending a lot of nudes with people. I always asked before hand if they were interested or not and all that, and I was messaging people who were a lot older than me or just older I’m general, but I also messaged people my age like 18-20. I’ve done a lot I’m not proud of, I was in a really dark place and just liked the attention I guess. It’s no excuse though, I was being gross and irresponsible. The last person I exchanged nudes with was an older guy like late 20’s. We talked a bit and he asked me if it was weird he liked younger guys and I just told him “It depends how young ig” and he asked me if I would ever do anything with someone younger and I told him “I’m 18, so no”. But then I was already uncomfortable, but he asked me would with an attractive 15 year old, I blocked him right after that, he was so creepy, he was the last person I messaged or sent nudes to. That was before I turned 19. I hate my past behaviors and now I see how stupid it is to exchange nudes with strangers, I just thought I was having fun. Now my POCD is through the roof, I started getting thoughts of “what if someone lied about their age” and all that, at first I felt confident that no one did, but now after months of ruminating, I’m terrified. I don’t know, I’ve talked to my therapist from school says it wouldn’t be my fault. But I’m terrified all the time, I’m scared that I wasn’t safe enough, I’m an idiot. I have genuine thoughts of unaliving myself or calling the police on myself. My friends say it’s common for people to share nudes on those kinds of apps, but I’m still horrified. I don’t even know anymore. I’m scared I forgot an interaction or that I’m suppressing something, but I don’t think I am, I remember a lot of the encounters I’ve had. I hate myself so much, I know this is long, but please, I need someone to reply, I feel completely alone right now.

So, back when i was 18, i got involved in an online art/rpg community through instagram. We would make characters, draw them, join group chats and talk about our characters interacting with each other- if was chaotic, but fun, and i got hooked. Eventually, as the group kept growing, people started making different discord servers, each surrounding different stories with over-arching plots, and everybody would develop their characters and have them interact. Imagine a mix between DnD and a collaborative novel. I started dealing with severe OCD when i was about that year, in the depths of quarantine, and these servers became an escape for me. There was one in particular that was very involved lore-wise, and i was very deeply invested in because one of my characters had a romantic arc with one of the server hosts characters. It wasn’t until i started dealing with POCD when i began to have issues with the server. The issues begin with the fact that the age range of people on the server was very wide, ranging from high school to college aged. I believe the youngest person in the server was about 13, but i didn’t interact with her much. I was homeschooled and i have younger siblings, so i’ve never had a problem with having younger friends- growing up, i had a best friend who was 2 years older than me, and through high school until just recently, my best friend was 2 years younger. That friend was actually in this art community as well, i got her involved during quarantine. The point being, i never even considered that having younger friends might come off as creepy. There were definitely inappropriate jokes being made in the server, but i tended to roll my eyes and brush them off. As far as i recall, i never made any myself- i didn’t even dare to start swearing until i was 21, i’ve always been a bit of a rule-follower- but my best friend did make suggestive jokes on occasion, and i would laugh, and now i worry that i goaded her on. There was one specific occasion where the two of us, along with a few other people- i don’t remember all of them, but one was my age, 19, and another would have been about 16 at the time- ended up in a separate discord chat, and they were all cracking jokes about creepy discord mods, calling each other “kitten” and being generally icky for the shock factor. I remember being very uncomfortable at the jokes being made, and i believe i even said so, but in a lighthearted “omg stop” way, when i should have just left. There were a few similar instances where people got a little too comfortable, and i just put up with it and laughed along instead of leaving, which i very much regret. The community eventually started to fall apart. Drama between members was the main reason- the server owner called another adult member out, saying some of her characters had ships with characters belonging to minors that were too explicit. This whole thing was shocking to me. i talked to both of them, considered them both my friends, and didn’t know what to believe. Looking back now, i very much think they were both in the wrong- the server had a “NSFW” art channel that you needed a special role to access, but the owner had set the age requirement to 17 instead of 18 because a younger member whom she was close with had asked her to. I believe i was told this secondhand by my best friend, who always knew more drama than me, and i had marked it as strange, but shrugged it off because it wasn’t my friendship, and i wasn’t in charge. I also have a tendency to trust the judgement of literally anyone else over myself, so if i did have any doubts, i would have brushed it off as my overthinking things. The server died eventually- the owner disappeared, so the plot couldn’t progress further, and i’m pretty sure there was a lot more drama going on that i wasn’t privy to, which is fine by me. I was in therapy while a lot of this was going down, so i told my therapist a lot of it- at the time one of my main concern was another adult member about my age who had gotten too comfortable making sexual jokes with one of the high schoolers, and i did eventually message him and ask him to be more mindful- he did agree that he had been out of line and promised to be more careful in the future. It’s been about 3 years now since i left the community- i still keep in contact with a couple people, but i’ve parted ways with the majority. However, i’m still absolutely wracked with guilt over the entire thing- i was friends with some of the minors, too. There was one friend, 3 years younger than me, whose character was going to have a romantic arc with one of mine at one point. I remember warning them that my character was asexual as a way of warding off any weirdness, and i think they might have made some joke back about their character “not having time for that anyway” though i can’t clearly recall. They also really liked one of my other characters at one point, and would make flirty comments about them- i can’t remember what i said in response, probably some form of “they’re flattered”. I worry so much that i might have encouraged it, and that makes me predatory. Most of my guilt comes from the fear that i’m guilty by association, that being there at all makes me a creep, that i should have said something sooner or just left. Another part of me doesn’t even fully believe that the server owner or the other girl she was fighting with were bad people- i was friends with them, we were in the same online spaces for years! It’s so stupid, but i genuinely compared my own behavior to theirs, used them as a measuring stick to make sure i wasn’t doing anything wrong when my OCD started raising alarm bells. To this day, i still can’t tell if i’m blowing things out of proportion. I know i need to be in therapy again- this has been weighing on me so heavily recently, making me feel nauseous and doomed for literal days at a time- but i could really use some outside perspective. That RPG used to be such a comforting form of escapism to me, but now just remembering it makes me feel vile. i feel like i need to go back through all of my old chats and make sure i didn’t say anything gross to anyone, but i’m so afraid of what i might find, the thought makes me ill.

I hope someone can respond... Im genuinely so triggered and so anxious... Dr disrespect was accused of inappropriately messaging and sending explicit images to a minor, and trying to meet up with them at twitchcon... my POCD is saying that my situation with me venting about 18+ explicit HOCD stuff to people in the PM's on an OCD groupchat I found from NOCD, including the minors, when I was 19, means that I am just as bad as they are... or worse... I pm'ed them from the support group and vented to them in private (including the minors) about my 18+ explicit HOCD struggles... one was uncomfortable by it so i stopped messaging her... the other gave me reassurance so i kept asking her for reassurance... I dont ever want to ever be attracted to minors in any way... I dont ever want to ever engage in any inappropriate relations with minors in any way... i dont ever want to EVER be a MAP, a P, or a gro*mer in any way... I dont ever want to be what my pocd says about me... im so scared... someone said that I need help, that I need to turn myself in, and that im hiding behind a diagnosis because of this situation... i genuinely feel so hopeless... I dont ever want to ever be a monster...

I hope someone can respond... Im genuinely so triggered and so anxious... Dr disrespect was accused of inappropriately messaging and sending explicit images to a minor, and trying to meet up with them at twitchcon... my POCD is saying that my situation with me venting about 18+ explicit HOCD stuff to people in the PM's on an OCD groupchat I found from NOCD, including the minors, when I was 19, means that I am just as bad as they are... or worse... I pm'ed them from the support group and vented to them in private (including the minors) about my 18+ explicit HOCD struggles... one was uncomfortable by it so i stopped venting to her after she told me she was uncomfortable by it twice... the other gave me reassurance so i kept asking her for reassurance for my 18+ hocd struggles... I dont ever want to ever be attracted to minors in any way... I dont ever want to ever engage in any inappropriate relations with minors in any way... i dont ever want to EVER be a MAP, a P, or a gro*mer in any way... I dont ever want to be what my pocd says about me... im so scared... someone said that I need help, that I need to turn myself in, and that im hiding behind a diagnosis because of this situation... i genuinely feel so hopeless... I dont ever want to ever be a monster...