I’m feeling very scared and alone lately I’ve been trying to work through POCD and have spoken to a therapist about it but he keeps telling me it’s my inner child. I don’t think this is working and just making me feel worse. I have made an appointment with an OCD specialist and just hope this is a better approach because considering these thoughts are my inner child is bringing up even more trauma and making me feel like I’m completely messed up. It just feels like I will never get over this.

TW: Abuse/Pocd Im feeling really hopeless right now. I have an extensive history of sexual abuse, neglect, physical and emotional abuse as well and a significant amount of trauma from my childhood. I didn’t get any help until my late teens. During this time period I was an incredibly troubled child/teenager and I made a ton of really bad decisions that go against all my morals and values now as a grown adult. I feel like I messed up so bad I don’t deserve to recover. I don’t want to discuss all the events because they are quite personal to me but I’m really struggling with past sexual mistakes and feeling like some sort of deviant because of my past. I never hurt anyone and I never to my knowledge did anything illegal but I definitely had sexual behavior issues from my abuse. I sexualized my own abuse to cope with it. I feel horrible about this. Like I’m a monster. It also convinces me my thoughts are true and it’s evidence. Should I go to a OCD specialist for this or a sex therapist? Is there anything they can even do.

Never feels like I can fully put my mind to rest. The problem with OCD for me is once I'm over one worry there's another buried deep into my mind that I'm not fully over. The two events I'm not completely over is when I tried to help a 17 year old with POCD when I was 19 and the topics unfortunately were detailed and even then I explained to them I wasn't comfortable with talking to them. I guess I just had a hard time saying no to someone needing help but it eventually made me so uncomfortable that I stopped talking with them altogether at some point. Then the other thing is being so worried that I committed a crime because my elbow touched someone's behind when I didn't want that to happen at all. I didn't want to listen to my OCD by saying move my arm or something horrible is going to happen so I didn't and then something bad actually did happen. I thought it would just be a light touch while zipping a bag up but then it was worse than I ever wanted it to be and it was so awkward and I hated it. I feel like I just won't be able to get back to the way I was before OCD started all of this. Aside from that I've just had extreme health anxiety but am too afraid to reach out to a PCP even though I need to. Something deep down is telling me I should do this but I'm just so anxious and embarrassed about sharing things to them. I can't even enjoy the things I used to do because this is constantly just messing up my life. I'm hoping I get a start of positivity next time I see my therapist. This just sucks. Feels like others around me are doing so much better than I am and I'm just kind of stuck on these same problems and feeling absolute shame and guilt from the past over and over again. I'm just so sick of dealing with this every single day so I just use escape whenever I can. Even that doesn't really work. I just wish I could go back in time.

it feels like therapy isn't working at all, like I've been super reluctant to participate or try and get better. I was doing really well at first but I've been in a slump with it lately, and the idea of doing exposures again makes me really scared. Like, I know if have to do them to get better but I'm so afraid that I'll pick something, watch it, and think the child character is attractive and start fantasizing about them. Like what if the only thing keeping me from doing that is because I've been avoiding them? Also is it normal for pocd to convince you that you prefer one gender more strongly than the other? Bc for some reason it feels more real with boys than it does girls (I'm mostly straight) and like.. idk I'm just not feeling good.