POCD

I'd like some help with this OCD giant if you don't mind. I am a 26-year-old male with a history of OCD, particularly around morality, attraction, identity, and what thoughts or reactions mean about me as a person. For about a year before this current episode, I had largely gotten past several similar OCD spirals. In those situations, my OCD would latch onto intrusive thoughts, brief perceptions, or questions about attraction and then demand certainty about what they meant. While those episodes were very distressing at the time, I was eventually able to move on from them and function normally for roughly a year. My current obsession started after a very brief mental event. I was extremely tired, rubbing my eyes, and not thinking about anything sexual. A memory/image of a teen actor from a show I liked as a kid that i recently rewatched suddenly flashed into my mind even though I had not watched the show in months. And my brain immediately tagged it as attraction (the actress was 16 at the time of the show and thats what appeared in my mind) The event happened extremely fast. Almost immediately afterward, my brain began questioning whether I had found the image attractive before consciously realizing or if my OCD just tagged it as a threat because it appeared so out of the blue Since then, I have spent weeks analyzing the moment. The main fear is: “If I had any attraction response, even for a split second before context fully registered, does that mean I am secretly attracted to minors or that this reveals something terrible about me?” The obsession keeps returning to the idea that: * The first automatic reaction is the “real” one. * Anything I think after context arrives may be rationalization. * If I had a positive reaction before realizing the person’s age, then that reaction is what truly defines me. At the same time, another part of me recognizes: * The image appeared randomly. * I was exhausted at the time. * The event was extremely brief and unclear. * OCD often latches onto random thoughts and treats them as threats. * Once age/context entered my awareness, my reaction was immediately negative and I did not want the thought. The current obsession has become less about the original flash itself and more about what that flash supposedly means about my character. Questions I repeatedly analyze include: * Was it a random face flash followed by an OCD alarm? * Was there attraction before context? * Does context changing my reaction matter? * If someone initially thinks a person looks attractive and later learns they are underage, is trying to justify that just cope? * Does an automatic perception define who someone really is? * Am I a bad person if a split-second reaction occurred before I knew the person’s age?