**tw; mentions of pocd and harm ocd** Sorry in advance for the long post. I feel as if I should address pocd, because talking about it to people who understand seems to help me a lot. I’ve always had OCD, however, I didn’t get this particular theme until I was 17 (I’m 19 now) and a senior in high school. Pedophilia was briefly mentioned in my psych course, and my brain went absolutely nuts telling me “what if I’m capable of being that.” Similar things have happened in my past; OCD tricked me into believing I was a murderer when I was around 7 because of crime segments on the news, and OCD later tricked me into thinking I could be a serial killer, but pocd arguably is the worst theme to have and all of you that have it are literally the strongest people alive. On top of that, I’ve only ever been attracted to older adults, yet this theme still persists. I just want to go back to the version of me that I was before I got this theme. If I had a do over in life I would have never taken that course, it straight up ruined my life. I will literally take any other theme over pocd at this point honestly. Thank you for reading if you’ve gotten this far, you’re a very patient person lmao bless.

Trying not to seek reassurance, but rather connect the dots on my OCD and possible reasons as to why I am the way I am. I have severe OCD (or at least I hope I do) mainly surrounding POCD. I've had symptoms of OCD the majority of my life but this theme has come up more recently. When I was a kid, and i'm talking 6-7, I was first exposed to some really gross adult content online. It was introduced to me by a friend of mine around the same age of me. I saw some really disgusting things that a 6-7 year old should definitely not see. This was not a one time occurrence, as I had been exposed to taboo topics online years to come after that, such as the same friend introducing me to Omegle... And i'm sure you can imagine how that went, theres a lot of genuinely disgusting human beings on there. Coming back to the reason for making this post; is it possible to early exposure to this content could be one of the reasons I struggle with POCD? It genuinely scares me to death because you hear that real p*dos dealt with simular situations when they were kids, so thats kind of making me feel that this could be more than OCD, and I could be a genuinely bad person. My POCD feels so real, that at times i'm fully convinced its not OCD. Sometimes I can't even distinguish the feelings of attraction between a younger person and an older person, except for the feeling of anxiety and fear. Its really hard to explain without going into detail, but it just feels so real. Some feedback on this would be great, thank you all.

Please read this. I’ve had ocd pretty much a lot of my life but never knew what it was until my senior year of highschool. I’m 21 with 2 kids and i believe i’ve had pocd a little bit before my daughter was born (which was 8 months ago). It made me start looking at all kids differently and i hate it. But it really started triggering me about 3 months ago. I’ve been thinking if i’d intentionally touched or harmed my kids the wrong way, or any kids for that matter. This started giving me false memories (or at least hope they are). I’ve been having panic attacks, yelling at myself, punching walls, praying, and even thoughts of ending my own life. I grew up in a severe toxic household throughout my childhood and teenage life. I’ve never wished that on my kids since i became a dad. I wanna give them the life i never got. I look back my photos of my children and i feel like i’m a complete fraud of a dad. I cannot look at my kids or be around them a lot of times. I can’t hold my daughter right. I can’t change their diaper when they need it. Even my son came and was hugging on me the other night while i was watching tv and i acted like a stranger to him. I can very little do this stuff sometimes because it’s either i get relief or i push my thoughts as far back as i can. I get scared if i did something to not just my kids, but any other kids in the past. I have such a a great life and such a beautiful family. It was hard and stressful at first being young with a family but i couldn’t be more thankful at all for them. I’m just so lost and stressed right now that i just don’t know what to do anymore

Being exposed to taboo p*rn as young as first grade ruined my life and now ocd is making me pay for it. I have so much guilt for being a child/teen and looking at taboo stuff, and it was all fictional or anime or whatever but it was still so so gross. and I didn't realize It because I had been used to it at so young 🫠 I think what haunts me most is when I was a kid/young teen (like 12-14ish) and didn't have access to p*rn I'd imagine stuff similar to what I'd seen in the art. I can't even believe I'd imagine scenarios involving kid characters or whatever because it had been so normalized to me and I assumed it was normal since it was fiction. I'm 23 now so it's been a decade since I've done anything like that and I've never had the urge to since but still. I've NEVER been attracted to kids or had any urges or anything ever, even when I was addicted. The thought makes me want to vomit, I'd rather die than associate anything sexual with kids/minors and I think people who groom or assault kids are vile. But I still feel like the fact that I imagined stuff similar to the things I read sometimes when I was young is proof I'm a p*do. I don't think people would believe me if I said I'm not. I just feel like I don't deserve to live or that if I do, I'm living a lie. I know 'I was a kid too' but even when I was 13/14 I read/imagined stuff with characters younger than me because I thought it was normal. I'm so disgusted. I've had this theme for so long I'm starting to wonder if ocd is right. I feel too ashamed to tell my therapist.