POCD

I’ve given up with the confessing. I feel so drained and irredeemable that why even confess anymore? I don’t know if this is a good thing. On paper, it looks great. My bf thinks I’m better, but I feel like I’m dying. The attraction, arousal, urges, compulsions are all getting so much stronger. I feel like I’m embracing a monster. The POCD is driving me mad. I genuinely cannot see kids anymore because it’s immediate checking compulsions and intrusions. I need help. Has anyone gotten to this point and made it back to “normal”? I feel like a pedophile who is simply ashamed of being one.

hi i’m feeling a little discouraged and was just wondering if anyone wanted to share their experiences with pocd like how real it is for them and maybe some recovery stories like what that looks like and what helped you get there and how they are now i just had my therapy appointment and am kinda down bc i have to stick with uncertainty and that really bothers me… but anyone wanna share?

TLDR; i'm terrified that my past confessions/need for reassurance to the wrong people will get back at me one day from them not knowing it was undiagnosed OCD/not understanding. back when i was 17/18 i began struggling severely with POCD. at the time, i wasn't diagnosed and had not much idea what OCD was, so naturally i just thought i was a terrible person. i needed reassurance from everyone - even coworkers, friends, anyone, some who barely knew me. i'd tell people about the thoughts i was struggling with and when i look back it upsets me because i know deep down they thought it was weird. i don't know why i felt the need to tell these people about my POCD. i even remember one of my supervisors looking at me with this horrified look on her face. the job i worked at back then, i sometimes had to do parties for children so naturally i refused because of my theme, i was (still am if i'm honest) scared of children. i ended up not being kept permanently at my job (i was seasonal) due to me not doing the parties. i ended up going back to that job a year (ish) later after being diagnosed. i made it clear i had OCD and wore lots of pin badges about it and made it my mission to spread awareness of what OCD really is. i was on meds (still am). some people had left naturally, so i know there's some people out there who never actually found out i had OCD and i am terrified they think of me as this dangerous, weird p*do because of my intrusive thoughts whenever they hear my name/think of that job. i'm terrified that my old coworkers talk about me and describe me as a bad person. i had someone come into my new job a few months back, and being in customer service, we were having a friendly chat and she mentioned she just started working at my old job. i said i used to work there, she then asked me if i was *my full name* and i said yes, she said she'd heard about how bad my manager was back then. she tried to follow me on instagram and i blocked her. i'm terrified on how she knows about me, what does she know? what was she told? it haunts me to this day. what if she thinks i'm a bad person, because my old colleagues have told her stories of my POCD? why was i even mentioned? but yeah - long story short i'm just mortified that i was so open about POCD and that there's people out there who know about it that probably shouldn't, some who i know didn't like me very much anyway, and that it might come back to me later in life and i'd lose everything, and just overall the thought of someone thinking of me as a bad person. anyone else relate?