Is this normal?

@OneDayAtATimee How long have you been dealing with pocd?

@Shaodidi I haven’t really dealt with POCD in about 4 or so years :) I get intrusive thoughts about it sometimes but they go away kinda easily in a couple minutes when I don’t ruminate on them. Long ago, I dealt with POCD heavily, for a couple of months but both the fear and intrusions highly decreased when I did ERP with a therapist 👍

@OneDayAtATimee I did my POCD exposures and resisted compulsions, no matter how much it hurt me not to do them. I stopped focusing on my fear, and I instead focused on how there is a treatment that could get my life back-ERP and if I just do it, I’ll feel so much better. That all set me free from that theme

@OneDayAtATimee Have you ever had false attraction before? If so how do u deal with it?

@Shaodidi Yeah I’ve had it before and it was extremely uncomfortable. I dealt with it by just letting that feeling be there, not trying to figure it out. The less I cared about the false attraction, the less it would show up in my brain. Doing planned exposures also helped me because when the false attraction did show up randomly- I already had practice resisting compulsions around it. So that way, I got better at handling those feelings. ERP really can help with everything. Even people without OCD do ERP. For example, people with social anxiety turn their lives around by forcing themselves to engage with people. Even people without GAD do ERP as well

@OneDayAtATimee I have a strange question that I want to ask but it might be considered reassurance seeking, are you okay if I ask it?

@Shaodidi Sure! Go for it :)

@OneDayAtATimee Why didn’t u reply?

@Shaodidi I couldn’t see any reply on my end sorry. I’m wondering if any of your words were censored by Nocd? Maybe try to re-write it in a different way

@OneDayAtATimee So when I was 14 almost 15, I m@st@rebated to a 12 year old, weird Ik, but I’m wondering if it makes me a p#do.

@Shaodidi Ah I see! Yeah it was probably censored before but I see it now, thank you :) 👍 No I don’t think you are a p*do. I can imagine that this is one of your OCD obsessions. So I suggest you try to sit with the uncertainty, use mindfulness, and healthy distractions :) I like to go out of my comfort zone and go on a beautiful walk to focus on the world around me, rather than focusing on my intrusive thoughts and feelings

@OneDayAtATimee Ok thanks, I myself still don’t fully understand accepting uncertainty, I js can’t do it. I tell myself 24/7 that I’m not attracted to kids.

@Shaodidi - I get that! It's super hard 100% to do it. We all would love to knwo the answers. But Ocd clouds our judgment and makes us confused. No amount of reassurance or rumination, or whatever other compulsion- will ever be enough to solve our questions. So we say to accept not knowing the answer for sure, so that we can resist doing those compulsions we do to try to solve the questions. Compulsions is what makes us sick. Resisting them makes us feel less anxious and more clear-headed over time :)

@OneDayAtATimee Also I think p#rn and m@stirbTiln were a big cause in this pocd thing, do u have advice on how to stop all that? It’s so bad, I wish I never saw that stuff.

@OneDayAtATimee Also really worried abt the fact that when I was a teen going through puberty I watched pork a lot, and I read somewhere that porn at a young age causes pedophilia, so I’m worried now…

@Shaodidi Yes unfortunately that’s the problem with research compulsions- you cannot unsee the information that you have read (which may not even apply to you!) Imagine I have contamination OCD and I have a cold so I google a diagnosis for a coughing symptom. Google will tell me I have 10 different horrible diseases. And those diseases won’t even apply to me 😄 The internet will always tell you the worst things you can think of. So it’s best to try to decrease that compulsion. I have never heard of porn at a young age causing pedophilia but I’m sure it’s possible! There’s even a lot of soft p*rn on regular sites like Instagram and Youtube, which many kids have access to. Does that mean that the millions of kids who have watched very inappropriate things automatically became p*dos? I highly doubt that :) Ocd turns a rare possibility into a 100% probability. Also, if you genuinely think something is unhealthy for you (outside of OCD), feel free to stop. But if you’re trying not to watch p*rn anymore as only an avoidance compulsion- that’s bad for your OCD because you’re teaching your brain that p*rn is a scary danger and so Ocd will obsess even harder about it. P*rn could possibly be turned into an exposure instead

@OneDayAtATimee For me I feel like I should stop prn bc it was what started pocd for me in my opinion, it exposed me to all those nasty shi and fetishes, I’m js worried that if I don’t fix my porn thing it’s gonna make me a p#do