Hey everyone trigger warning about intrusive thoughts and pocd this is just a little rant I need to get out My intrusive thoughts just keep getting worse and worse, I have to shake my head and clench my teeth to stop them, being quarwntined has just made it worse I can’t look at anyone who could be perceived as female or younger than me without my mind sexualising every part of their body I hate it so much it’s tearing apart my morals and my mind , I can honestly feel my mind slipping. I want to get better so badly but there’s still a week or more until my weekly sessions start and I don’t even know if they will help enough, I want to live happily and not suffer and do all the things I loved.

You tagged this with religion themed OCD. I’m curious what role religion plays here. Years ago, my religion made my OCD much, much worse. Be careful that you haven’t “criminalized” normal sexual desire in your own mind (which some religions tend to encourage). Whether you believe that you evolved to desire sex, or that a Creator designed you that way, one thing that all religions acknowledge is that human beings are (among other things) sexual creatures. As a sexual creature, you are expected to notice other people, to notice their bodies and admire some of them. I don’t think it’s reasonable or realistic for any religion to tell you that is wrong. My thought is, you may be fearful of fulfilling your normal sexual desires because in your religious framework doing so would make you “bad”, or worse yet, destined for hell. As a result, you have a ton of anxiety around the question, “am I a good person”, and that leads you to a) attempt to convince yourself that you have no immoral desires, and b) constantly check to see if you do have these desires (by noting how you react to stimuli, such as, a pretty girl at church). Now that you are checking your sexual reactions so often, to monitor for evidence of immorality, you are sure to see minors, check your reaction, and at some point be confused or disturbed. This confusion could be caused by something like an erection right after seeing a minor. Sounds bad, right? But why might that happen to a perfectly good natured guy like you, who has no desire to harm children, nor any pedophilic tendencies? Well, when we put so much focus on our own sexual reaction, we put a lot our attention on our genitals, and that’s all it takes to get an erection. And that’s just one common example—there are other possible explanations, including totally physical ones that have nothing to do with any stimuli (sometimes I get an erection and I’m not turned on at all—literally just typing emails at work—it’s blood flow—it’s not always sex) But of course, if we don’t understand this is OCD, we take this as evidence that we are pedophiles. But again, we don’t want to accept it. So then we look for more evidence. And the cycle repeats, each time getting meaner and more painful. My advice: look at these people you are afriad to look at, and just breathe. When the thoughts come, don’t engage them, don’t comment on them, just breathe. Don’t ignore them, but don’t look them in the eye. Just let them float by. I hope that helps you. It helped me a great deal.