I was watching a video and the guy is talking about OCD in general. He says you are supposed to say “I guess it will happen” when you have an OCD fear or intrusive thought. But my thing is if my brain is telling me I have to be on guard or else I will be a danger to children I’m just not sure how I can say “I guess it will happen”. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?
Accepting the thoughts doesn’t mean to go out and touch children. Or do whatever the theme is about. It makes you just waving at the thought and resisting compulsions that go with them.
@Justmesadly Oh I see. And by going with them you mean for instance arguing against them, reassurance seeking, ruminating about them, or believing they have some kind of meaning? Cause that’s where I get really caught. It feels so opposite of my character and it feels like I need to defend myself from them
@Nobody special Correct! Acceptance is like okay this thought is so annoying but hey thought I’m gonna keep doing my life while you hang out over there and I don’t believe you but I’m not gonna ruminate about if it’s true, I’m not gonna test it out, I’m not gonna seek reassurance, it’s just there
@Justmesadly Thank you, I’m gonna practice this!
Accept just means "acknowledge & allow" NOT that you agree with pedophilia. These are just thoughts. Thoughts are not facts or actions. POCD is really about very uncomfortable thoughts that go against your values (that's why they are so scary).
Comment deleted by user
@Featured121 lol I get what you mean and I have read about what you’re saying too being the correct approach to these thoughts. As for the video it was a YouTuber that was recommended to me by a support group I found through IOCDF so I think it’s legit. But who knows. He is Nathan Peterson @ocdandanxiety on YouTube
What I have been doing is just recognizing the thought as OCD and reminding myself it’s all lies I have no evidence I would ever do anything harmful. But I worry that this could be me “arguing” with the ocd and make my symptoms last longer or worse.
@Nobody special Honestly, it’s important you recognize that you are continuing the cycle by identifying the thought as OCD AND then saying you have no evidence. You can say a thought originates from OCD and observe that or you can say it originates from OCD and then try to again ruminate on it.
You accept the thoughts and that you have POCD and letting your brain do whatever it wants as you go about your day—your thoughts mean nothing until you assign meaning TO them. You aren’t accepting anything else.
I keep getting these groinal responses when I think about kids or see one and it's really distressing, I only just learned that OCD can make you feel that and it's not actually attraction but it's so hard to remember that and I've seen people talking about accepting uncertainty but I'm so scared to think "maybe it's attraction maybe it's not" instead of "no it's not attraction that's disgusting" and idk what to do
17f So basically I think you know this whole accept and sit with the uncertainty thing. It applies to pocd as well. Because you can ruminate, test yourself, seek reassurance as much as you want but it will never be enough for you brain to be sure you are not a P. So you need to sit with "Maybe I am a P maybe not" and just don't do anything about it. So sometimes I can do that. But here comes moral ocd. If I accept the chanse of me being a pedophile, isn't it morally wrong for me to be around children? Look at children? Watch movies with children in it? Cause now I can't even look at children even if it was an accident without freaking out and thinking that I'm a monster. Sometimes it feels morally wrong to leave the house because there is a chanse I can meet a child on the street I genuinely don't know what to do. It feels paralyzing at this point. Seems like I can't do anything. Like I even need to cover children on the screen with my hand when I watch a movie. It's exhausting.
I've been told a lot that in order to get better, we need to tolerate uncertainty, which yea I get that and I'm trying every day more and more to reach that point!! But I've also been told that we need to tolerate uncertainty AND "our worst fears becoming true". Like how does that work, especially with POCD, OCD about a///ault, SA and all of that? Like that is really difficult for me and I don't really understand how I'm supposed to just shrug stuff like that off
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond
