POCD

If you’re triggered by POCD please stop reading now. I (24F) am a daycare teacher, I have worked with kids (as a substitute or assistant) since 2018 and that’s when my POCD first started. Now I have my first real daycare teaching job and I’m the main educator in the room. In December of 2021 , I went through a stressful relationship and when I ended things, I was left in a pit of depression. This triggered a massive OCD spiral and I haven’t been quite the same since. I began to ruminate about past memories of innocent interactions I’ve had with children and my brain conjured up all these alternate scenarios that almost made me throw up. And I began to believe them. When it got too much and I felt like I had no will to be on this earth anymore ,I finally opened up to my mom and best friend who were so supportive. They encouraged me to seek therapy and I did with an OCD therapist and it’s been great. I’m writing because my job has been extremely triggering as of late. Especially diaper changes, I have all these strange thoughts and feelings that feel so real. I’m hyper aware of my hands and if they brush against the leg or any body part I internally freak out , and once I’m home I ruminate and cry. I get so wound up in my thoughts I convince myself I did it on purpose and must be jailed. Recently I had one of the children on my lap while I helped her put on her shoes. I put my hands under her armpits to steady her and my mind felt it was too close to her chest/nipples so I adjusted my hands away. I had a sick thought that I enjoyed having my hands there and immediately had a wave of anxiety in my stomach. I put on her shoes and put her down. I haven’t stopped thinking about this encounter and I’ve been crying for a while about it today. Another thing I am struggling with is that I willingly watched a scene from “the perks of being a wallflower” when the young boy is being sexually abused by his aunt. A clip came on tiktok (not that scene) and I remembered the movie as I watched it years ago. I thought “oh that’s the movie where the boy gets abused by his aunt”. For some reason, I felt compelled to watch it , specifically that part. I typed in the movie name on YouTube and a scene with that part immediately was the first result. I clicked on it and watched it , about halfway I started to feel scared and was about to pause it and click off. But I knew it wouldn’t be graphic as I’ve watched it before so I continued, I felt sick. I was comparing myself to the aunt , looking for similarities in our looks and thinking about if I’ve ever said anything like she was saying (“this our little secret”) to the children in my classroom. I don’t know why I wanted to see that clip , but I did. I believe my life is over because of this, I can’t quit my job because I need the money but I don’t know how I can go back to work on Monday. Please , can someone talk to me or give advice , I just really want to talk to someone.

POCD

Nica

Date posted: 2y

You have to keep going through all the uncomfortable feelings, thoughts, and images. The more you fight against the POCD, the worse it will become and it can absolutely ruin your life IF you let OCD win. The way I got over my POCD is working with children for a few years. Now it isn’t a problem. I was also in ERP therapy and heavily focused on the POCD theme. It was a lot of extra work but it was worth it.

Fifi3201

Date posted: 2y

@Nica I definitely feel like working with kids has helped , but some days it’s just so triggering. My therapist and I are mainly working on the POCD theme as well so I hope it gets better. I really appreciate your message Nica , I see you on this app a lot and I want to tell you you are just awesome! We all appreciate you here and you are such an inspiration ☺️

Nica

Date posted: 2y

@Fifi3201 I’m glad you’re working on it with a specialist! That truly does make things better for you in the long haul. Also, thank you for your kind words 💕

Anonymous

Date posted: 2y

I can tell you are struggling with this theme. I can tell it is causing you distress, because you mentioned the wave of anxiety that comes over you. About watching the clip, I would propose that it might be a form of checking. You mentioned that you were looking for similarities between you and the aunt. When you are dealing with that much anxiety due to the intrusive thoughts, your brain really wants to prove that you are not going to act on them. Therefore, we can start to compare ourselves with people who seem to act on similar thoughts in order to prove that we aren't like them. I know this is difficult to accept, and depending on your anxiety level, this may even seem incoherent, but hopefully your therapist can help with this.

Fifi3201

Date posted: 2y

@Anonymous Thank you for your reply ❤️. Yes the anxiety is almost instant when I have intrusive thoughts while doing mundane tasks for the children. I get a cold , almost dropping feeling in my stomach and chest and my breathing gets more rapid. I do hope she can help. She’s on vacation so I couldn’t see her this past week which was hard because I’m slightly spiralling, but she’s back this week so hopefully it will be okay.

Anonymous

Date posted: 2y

@Fifi3201 Hang in there, you can do this!

Lulu~

Date posted: 22w

Shut up and dance with me - Black mirror. Help pls

Hello, so I’m currently spiralling so so so bad and I want someone to help me and tell me what to do rn. I have dyslexia so there might be some misspelling 3 months ago I read a manga that triggered my POCD to start The manga was cute, I enjoyed it tbh, but it had pedophilic themes (idk why I continued on to read it?!) and in the end it got quite sexual. I was sick while reading it so sadly I don't have much memories. Anyways afterwards I read some comments about how this was smth only pedos like. And since then, intense POCD. Stopped eating, isolated nyself, tried to commit multiple of times and called 991 on myself too. I kept on going about and thinking if I wanted smth sexual to happen, I know I thought there would be a time jump. And thought that something sexual might have happened then. But I can't stop doubting myself or thinking "what if I liked it when it started to get sexual" and the memories of such feel so real that I can't ignore them. I've never ever enjoyed CP before, or manga with SA (honestly I don't enjoy smut much overall, but they're pretty common in romance mangas) but if it has sexual themes and the characters look like kids/are kids/a weird age gap ect. I drop it, but idk why I didn't drop this one. Then I realised that I had never been attracted to kids, and this scenario doesnt have to mean that I am a pedophile. I also have ALOT of trauma around pedophilia (CSA survivor, started making CP as a coping mechanism. It ruined my childhood and took loads of cptsd therapy to stop relapsing.) And I didn’t have a spiral for weeks, I did epr fully and thought I had finally figured out a way to ignore the intrusive thoughts. Nope lol, today I was insanely bored and decided to watch black mirror. “Shut up and dance” I knew that there was an episode that I had been warned about being triggering bht naive like I tend to be I watched it. And now I’m deeply spiralling again. I’m so tired T_T

Anonymous

Date posted: 18w

POCD and changing baby diaper - please help

Hi NOCD community, I was hoping to get some advice from fellow sufferers. In December we welcomed the first baby into the family, my beautiful niece. Since then, my POCD has been awful, which I know is probably very normal. Last week, in the middle of a very high stress day in my family, I was changing my niece and as usually happens, I got intrusive thoughts about awful things people do to babies when changing them. The thoughts were so harrowing to have as I was also changing her at the exact same time, and I felt my hands just quickly want to finish patting her dry before putting her nappy on, and for some reason, my heart dropped with that hand movement, because I was afraid that I had acted out the awful thoughts in my head, in a moment of mania because my morals, values and heart do not align with abuse of any kind, especially to children. My niece is my everything, and I know I would never want harm to come to her in any way, shape or form. I love her endlessly. I am having therapy, but have only had a couple of sessions. But, I cannot shake the 'what if'. I am tortured over trying to remember what it was I did that made my heart drop, but I can't, and its getting fuzzier and fuzzier the more I try to remember. Could anyone offer any advice on this please? Thank you.

Lulu~

Date posted: 17w

False memories + real events (TW: POCD)

Hello 😭, so uhm I’m kind of in the point of my POCD where I’m just tired. I just need to get it all out and get some sort of instruction of how to just idk live? So for me my childhood is pretty blurry. I have a few real event blended with false memory events there but other than that I’m a csa victim. And the way I tried to cope? By fetishising nyself, making CP of myself, seeing my life goal as being used, raped and a prostitue. Self destructive behaviour through talking to pedophiles and seeing my only worth as if I was sexually attractive. Which made me kind of numb to CP as a coping mechanism I guess. And heres’s where my main event of REOCD/false memory ocd comes in. I have a few events in my life when I’ve accidentally stumbled across CP ish mangas or just plan abuse and not had a big reaction. Some of them I even liked the story. And my ocd LOVES playing with it, making me truly believe I enjoy and get of from CP. I’ve also had quite a few dreams. A few days ago I had a dream about me getting triggered by something I did in the dream. Which I now can’t figure out if it actually was a dream. But also moments overall where I’ve unintentionally touched my private part while my siblings are in the room or when I found a guy 2 years younger than me pretty in 4th grade. Or a few of my only friends who turned out to be younger than me, and I had talked about sexual things (like fan fictions, my trauma ect) with them. AHSHB I absolutely hate ruminating and I’m tired so so so so so so tried 😭 idk help me? Please TT

POCD

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