Hi all, I have an ERP question. I have POCD and I am terrified I would enjoy harming a child, particularly young girls. When I practice exposure I get several things: fear, dread, negative talk AND the big one, a very intense, very real groinal response. I often obsess that if get rid the fear/anxiety, I am left with the thoughts and the grional response. Which You can imagine I fear. Like, the only thing that separates me from a pedofile is my fear, why would I get rid of it? Regardless, I still experience some relieve after practicing exposure but I am left with a groinal response that stays lingering all day and eventually becomes a trigger. Anyone else experiences this? Any suggestions to work trough this in ERP?

I suffer from a similar problem but I haven’t been able to start ERP yet. I would imagine the groinal response will take longer to get rid of than the anxiety because your obsessions have conditioned your mind to view children in a sexual way which elicits a sexual response and the goal of ERP is to recondition your brain to treat children like you do anything else. The fear that you have is irrational it doesn’t actually prevent you from doing anything. Do you have this same fear with adults? No, and you’re not abusing nor are you worried about abusing adults. I know how difficult it is to differentiate between real attraction and the false sexual responses that come from ocd. I wish you luck ? and hope this brings some insight.

Yes I understand I am in the same boat. I would watch family movies that helps me. I am so scared but I survive it and it gets easier every time.

I do ERP every chance I get. It is hard and it leaves me with a lot of anxiety and scary emotions that I don’t want but it gets easier every time. Do you do visual or mental ERP?

I do both, although I have an impossible time with the visual ones, given what I explain before. It feels almost like a phobia. I have not been able to decrease fear with a visual exposure because I can’t accept the groin response. I do not understand how to sit with uncertainty when my body is reponding in a way I do not agree with and is pleasurable at the same time. Is a paradox. All this said, there have been many times in my life where I am distant enough from my thoughts amd urges that I do not experience a groin response. Is just that this pandemic has exacerbated everything. I do not have a way to channel my anxiety, or entertain my mind and the obsessions have deepened