Intrusive dreaming

[Continued] However, I soon realized something, and it was also something that notably my Mom was trying to tell me when I described my problems while I struggled with these intrusive thoughts, and that’s that if I was truly attracted to younger children / was gunna grow up to be a pedophile, then I wouldn’t be worried about it, because that’s not what pedophiles are really like. They own it in secrecy, and aren’t concerned about what they’re attracted to but rather how they’re going to get away with getting sexual with children. As for me personally, I knew for certain that wasn’t me, I wasn’t a deviant and DIDN’T WANT to be having these intrusive thoughts or to get sexual with anyone much younger than me / act on these horrifying thoughts that were for some reason continuously popping up in my mind, “what if I’m attracted to younger children/toddlers?”, “what if I grow up to be a pedophile?”, etc etc, and I suspect that you’re the exact same way That brings me to my next point tho, intrusive thoughts- and well, intrusive thoughts are just as they are described- intrusive! Unwanted! So if you consider these thoughts intrusive and unwanted, then that must mean that you aren’t / don’t want to be attracted to young children! Simple as that! Also, it is of EXTREME IMPORTANCE that you realize that WHAT OCD CLINGS ONTO ≠ YOUR VALUES / what’s important to you. Just because certain thoughts pass thru your mind doesn’t mean that you desire them, that they’re true, or that they’re a reflection of who you are, because most of the time they aren’t. Besides, we can’t control most of what we think about, so why worry about what you think and allow a thought to stay by worrying about it when you can just let it pass freely in and out? I understand this is all much easier said than done, but you’ve totally got this, I know it. It also helped me after I reasoned with these “what if” intrusive thoughts and debunked them with evidence/reasoning, to then mock them a bit, or make light of them, just because of how absurd, untrue, and unrealistic they are. So yes, this was a very traumatic, 2-month time period of my life, as I’m sure it currently is traumatic for you too, but with this advice I hope that it helps you eventually be able to look back on these intrusive thoughts you’re getting and laugh, just like I do today. Proud of you!

So my story here is funny right, I didn’t even know that “POCD” was a whole sub-genre of OCD that existed and that many people go/went thru until today, and this entire time I thought that I was all alone back in June-July of 2016 when I was struggling with similar intrusive thoughts that you’re describing here. I never had much physical symptoms due to my intrusive thoughts nor do I recall my intrusive thoughts manifesting themselves into dreams like you’re describing, but I simply was in a weird span of 2 months time in my life where I was also questioning my sexuality / what I was attracted to (thankfully I eventually figured out that I was only attracted to women, as I wanted to be / used to be so sure that I was, and now I am 100% certain of), and unfortunately that threw younger children into the mix as well. Granted, I was only 11 years old at the time, but I still was getting all of these uncontrollable, intrusive, “what-if” thoughts- I thought that I might be attracted to younger children and grow up to be a pedophile and there was nothing I could do about it.