i need help, if ANYONE can give me guidance PLEASE. I NEED IT. im a minor, i cannot tell my parents about these intrusive thoughts im having, so i cant get a therapist, nor can i get diagnosed. im scared i am a pedophile. i experienced a groinal feeling a couple days ago when i saw a picture of a little kid. I DID NOT REALIZE IT WAS A KID AT FIRST, but i freaked out. i freaked you guys. i even unfollowed the account i saw the picture of the young cchild on. im so scared that i am a pedophile. i cant live like this. what if i am but im i denial? i cant do it. ive experienced something like this before. i had a thought and obsessed about it about it. but i even think back, what if i wasnt obsessing? i was constantly online looking for answer for the thought. i was constantly confessing the thought to my ex (the thoughts were about him) and im just terrified. AND THEN, I HAVE THOUGHTS THAT SAY “you are a p*do and thats okay” BUT I DONT WANT TO THINK ABOUT THAT. I DONT WANT TO THINK LIKE THAT. i just want to be a normal teen. i wanna be worry free. i dont want to be a pedo. i wannt be happy. please any guidance you can give me i need it. does it sound like POCD to the people who have experienced OCD? or am i in denial. i cant live with myself being a pedo.

i've never been comfortable enough to post anything on here but today i thought i would try. i want to start off by saying i am not diagnosed with ocd but i have strong reason to believe i may have ocd. i want therapy but don't know how to tell my parents because this topic is one that makes me highly uncomfortable to the point where i can not breath. but here goes... starting in july of this year i began noticing symptoms of ocd. i was scrolling on instagram when a photo of a baby popped up in my feed. i was reading the caption when all of a sudden i became aware of my groinal area and i felt movement. i felt immediately sick to my stomach... wtf was happening to me? i then closed the app and sat there for a second thinking to myself "did i just get aroused by looking at the photo of a child?". i tested myself(one of the worst things to do, giving my ocd power) and reopened the app to look at the photo once more. i was obviously going to feel movement down below if i was hyper fixating on that area for ANY movement at all. and i did. i then started having cold and hot flashes, sweating, the room spinning, feeling as if i was going to throw up and pass out at the same time. was i a p3do??? did i like children?? of course the answer is no. but my ocd is twisting those thoughts and feelings into something more than they are, just thoughts and feelings. for the past few months after my first episode with ocd i have become more accepting of the fact that these feelings aren't meaningful. these do not align with what i truly believe which is why i feel so sick when they happen. but i will admit there are days when it is really tough for me to discern my thoughts from my intrusive ocd thoughts. i am constantly hyper aware of whatever is happening down there and its really frustrating and exhausting. it has now moved beyond pocd, every interaction everything i see i subconsciously am testing myself to see if i am aroused which leaves me to constantly feel a state of physical arousal. i know i should go to therapy but i am worried to tell my parents. like "hey mom and dad i have been having weird thoughts and feelings regarding children i think i need therapy" they would be horrified. i feel guilty and awful, my parents don't deserve that. i just don't know what to do. for a few years i had actually been wanting children of my own when im older, i had been thrifting the cutest baby outfits and thinking of how cool it would be to have a mini-me. now i feel as though that won't be possible. and i just don't know what to do.

Okay, so I was exposed to porn at 9. My older cousin came over to the house and asked if I could keep a secret and stuff and then he showed me porn. I got addicted to it ngl. I would watch it whenever I could and would always think about it when I wasn’t home. Because of this, I started reading mangas on this one website and I was still in elementary school when I started reading these I think, either that or middle school. Anyways, there was this one about these kids who did it and I was like oh I’m the same age as them and all that you know so I didn’t think much of it. I would still read it up to when I was in high school but I wouldn’t like read it often, I would just read it because I was familiar with it and it felt like I was still their age for some reason, like I didn’t see them as kids you know, it felt like they were my age. Oh my god, that makes it sound even worse. When my POCD started, I stopped reading that story because I was it terrified me so a little before I turned 18. I keep going back and forth on whether or not I’m actually a pedophile or not. I don’t know if it’s because I was exposed to that stuff so early and my cousin would constantly talk about sex when he was with me. I thought it was so normal to be reading and looking at that stuff. I didn’t realize. I’m scared that my nephews are going to be exposed to that so early like I was. My POCD mostly targets my nephews and now I’m scared that I’ll do the same thing to them and show them that stuff (I never will) or that I genuinely do like that stuff. I feel like throwing up while writing this. I just don’t want to be one. I’m sorry if this triggers you or if this seems like I’m seeking reassurance and maybe I am. I genuinely don’t know right now. I think I just needed to get this off my chest because I’ve been worrying about it for awhile.

Trying not to seek reassurance, but rather connect the dots on my OCD and possible reasons as to why I am the way I am. I have severe OCD (or at least I hope I do) mainly surrounding POCD. I've had symptoms of OCD the majority of my life but this theme has come up more recently. When I was a kid, and i'm talking 6-7, I was first exposed to some really gross adult content online. It was introduced to me by a friend of mine around the same age of me. I saw some really disgusting things that a 6-7 year old should definitely not see. This was not a one time occurrence, as I had been exposed to taboo topics online years to come after that, such as the same friend introducing me to Omegle... And i'm sure you can imagine how that went, theres a lot of genuinely disgusting human beings on there. Coming back to the reason for making this post; is it possible to early exposure to this content could be one of the reasons I struggle with POCD? It genuinely scares me to death because you hear that real p*dos dealt with simular situations when they were kids, so thats kind of making me feel that this could be more than OCD, and I could be a genuinely bad person. My POCD feels so real, that at times i'm fully convinced its not OCD. Sometimes I can't even distinguish the feelings of attraction between a younger person and an older person, except for the feeling of anxiety and fear. Its really hard to explain without going into detail, but it just feels so real. Some feedback on this would be great, thank you all.