- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
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.
- Date posted
- 4y
Thank you. It helps to know I am not the only one experiencing this. I think what you say is key but I had not discussed it this way in therapy. I will bring it up.
- Date posted
- 4y
Are you doing ERP eventually?
- Date posted
- 4y
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.
- Date posted
- 4y
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?
- Date posted
- 4y
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
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w
I’ve been feeling the urge to avoid intimacy or purposefully engage (for reassurance that I won’t give into a compulsion) because of intrusive thoughts and fear that I’ll “check/test” my reactions. My OCD is making me so scared that I’ll purposefully think of a child and try to see if I like it. It’s so complicated but I guess I’m mentally checking if I would mentally check during intimacy. I’ve even envisioned myself checking and it’s making me so nauseous. I know it’s a compulsion like any other but the sound of “touching yourself to the thought of a child” sounds atrocious and vile. I’m terrified I’ll automatically start checking next time I am being intimate. I truly feel so worried. If anyone has gone through something similar, I’d appreciate hearing your experience. Or if anyone has any advice?
- Harm OCD
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- Date posted
- 23w
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.
- Young adults with OCD
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- Date posted
- 21w
Does anyone else struggle with this? It's been the main thing powering my POCD, and it's only been getting worse. Especially when I see posts online of people sharing their personal stories relating to CSA, specifically grooming. It's so triggering now, but before this theme developed, the most I'd feel while reading posts like that would be disgust targeted towards people who did those things. Now, my first thought is, "What if I do something like that one day? What if I've done it before and I don't remember or didn't know I was doing it?" I have many, many different intrusive thoughts or worries related to this theme, but it all circles back to this specific fear that I'll become like the people who hurt and took advantage of me. Does anyone have advice for this? I'm not sure if I've asked a similar question in the past or not, but is this something I need to deal with separately before beginning ERP for OCD? I'm just curious and also lost on where to begin with all of this. I'm just glad I'm able to begin working through all of these issues now, rather than later in life when I'd probably have a lot more responsibilities. Anyways, any feedback is appreciated! 🤍
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