I’m trying to not let my pocd get to me today but it’s hard. I’m p much a kid at heart and I age regress to feel safe but I feel like I’m not ALLOWED to now and it’s killing me inside. My dad will talk to me like a kid (ik I’m 23) and instead I just feel guilt, like I’m not able to just let myself be. What’s rough is a lot of people don’t understand this part. So like idk. :| I just want to exist. Its causing me to get depressed too. Doesn’t help I had nightmares last night. I keep feeling like i don’t deserve to be around people, like I’m a danger to society. And I keep wanting to confess the stuff I did in my teen years. I hate it I really do. I feel tainted and I just want my innocence back. I just wish everything was ok bc it doesn’t feel ok.

Thank you for this. I’ve been so scared that it doesn’t get better at all. I’m scared of ERP not working. I haven’t started it yet but I’m terrified. I am ready to do anything to get the ocd to stop. POCD is one of my worst themes ever- and I won’t say what I did in my teen years because that’s confessing and that’s a compulsion of mine, but I will say anything I did was the same I didn’t know better or didn’t think it was bad back then. It just tears me apart there’s kids that age who do know better. Ocd always saying well or but. Now wjth the age regression it happens because I went through trauma dealing with growing up fast and dealing with the death of my grandmother. And then my mom has Alzheimer’s. So I feel very alone a lot. I tend to go back to a time where I felt safe so like my regression age is like maybe 10 ish years. Because that’s where most of my safe memories are from. Before things got really bad in my life. But now I feel guilt about it nowadays when I obsess about pocd. It sucks.

@Mars I'm really sorry. Life hasn't been kind to me either. This thing all happened because I was falsely accused of being a child predator for ahem - "being gay and talking to a younger cousin of mine while we were walking around my neighborhood because my grandmother asked me to walk him around so he didn't sit bored and alone". I kid you not. From then on it was trauma and it was OCD and it was the most sick horrifying compulsions that would get people to question if I really did have OCD, it would get me to question it as well. I've been accused like 4 times on this app of the same shit because a lot of people here are ignorant that theres more than their theme of OCD and that OCD can be about taboo shit and not just "fear of disease". Fun times. It made me toxic. You know how at times you can get so depressed that you lash out and try to push people away because youre just begging for that little "push" to completely shove you off the edge so you finally have a reason to end it all? Yeah, for OCD that shit is cakewalk. I'm so upset at how underrepresented this shit is. It is also incredibly upsetting that even with POCD, I have to be a third parent to my little sister because her parents who are twice my age are literally fucking stupid and don't know how to support her, be there for her, help her with her homework, etc. Like it really has not been fair in the slightest. But people did not lie when they said "time heals". When you finish therapy and you learn to make it a habit for you to ignore any urge for compulsions and do all your ERP exercises, your OCD may not disappear, but it will become background noise. And with time the volume will get lower and lower till you literally get over a trigger in 20 minutes and not 2-3 whole days. Believe me this shit is real, it's why it's so expensive. I wish you all the luck. I hope everything works out for you. Just don't expect to be healed after finishing therapy. There are no guarantees but there are definitely major changes. Shit will get better as time goes on and so long as you are consistent with responding to OCD shit in a theraputic fashion instead of how you feel like you should.

@Vimli I am SO SORRY that happened to you. As someone who’s gay I get TERRIFIED of that myself. Life really isn’t fair and things just happen but I try to just take them one day at a time. I want to get better and I am willing to do the ERP. I’ll see what happens Monday since this is actually a psychologist I originally spoke to from a crisis center at my local mental hospital. Something similar did happen to me where I dated someone online when I was 17 and didn’t realize how old they were. It isn’t the only thing that sets my pocd off as there’s things that happened when I was 16 but I will not confess on them because that I know is just my compulsion. I try to just tell myself things like “I didn’t know better” and things like that. But god it hits me hard no matter how many times therapists and friends reassure me I did nothing wrong. It drives me bonkers and the things I’ve seen keep flashing in my mind and make me want to isolate myself. I just want to keep pushing and I want to get better. I want to be happy. I honestly am terrified of ERP yes but I am SO ready.

@Mars I completely know how you feel. Completely. Just know that if you didn't know/ weren't aware of something - it's not your fault. And yes - kids and teens tend to be fucking idiots so don't even think about it. What's important is the now and what's important is pushing yourself towards recovery. I know you're gonna make it.

@Vimli I really appreciate your words. I’ve had reassurance a bunch of times but never just being told recovery will be rough but recovery will make things ok. That’s what I’ve wanted to hear for so long. I just really appreciate your words so much and I’m so glad I’m not alone.

@Mars Hey, no problem! Good luck!