Uncertainty

Trigger Warning: please help! Had a kind of rough day after about a week of feeling decent. Question: I work in childcare, I have memories from before the ocd got bad of my eyes kind of naturally looking at butts. And sometimes, it would be kids butts. I kind of remember commenting on it in my head saying stuff like “wow that’s big for a child” or stuff related to that, and one time even a child came over to me and told brought me over to the monkey bars and told me that he could see a girls underwear, and I kind of looked before telling him it was rude to say that, it was kind of like my eyes were naturally attracted to it, kind of like a car accident I couldn’t look away. But I never thought of it again until the OCD started. I’ve never in my entire life pleasured myself to the thoughts of children, it’s never even crossed my mind until the OCD started, but I’m kind of convincing myself I am one. Ugh I’m so sick of this.

TW: I’m so desperate lately. I can’t sleep, eat or do anything else than feeling anxious and unworthy, full of guilt. A couple of days ago I had sex with my boyfriend and wasn’t turned on and suddenly I thought about something that would turn me on in that moment, thought of different things and suddenly I thought „Just think about children, just this one time“ and I feel like I didn’t do anything against it, I even think I enjoyed it and since then I’m full of fear because I always thought OCD means you do not have these thoughts because you want them but because you can’t control them and you do not act on them. But now I feel like I have and I can’t stop thinking I really am a pedophile now. I feel so anxious depressed and guilty and I do not know what to do, I went to my therapist today and she said it’s my POCD, but I feel like a liar, I’m feeling like maybe I don’t have POCD, I am just denying what I truly am it is horrible I don’t know what to do or think. I’m lost

So my POCD started because I had the misfortune of running into a drawing depicting a child being raped (granted it was just a video game character and not an actual real life child) but now I feel like my brain is telling me I enjoyed looking at that and even I can’t tell whether or not I did. I’m just so ashamed and I wish I never saw it. Soon after that I was constantly trying to reassure myself I’m not a pedophile, that I don’t enjoy the thought of children being sexually abused, or that I’ve never been sexually attracted to a child, etc. My thoughts never leave me; I’m stressing out about this literally every hour, minute and second of the day.