My POCD is making me feel horrible! Whenever I get these bad intrusive thoughts or POCD, or whenever I’m around little kids. My stomach crawls and feels bad, I get anxious and depressed, and even worse I get groinal response sometimes and I can never tell if I like the intrusive thoughts or not. My OCD says I do and that I’m attracted but it makes me feel so anxious depressed and horrible. I can’t take this anymore what did I do to deserve this. I feel so bad and I can’t tell the difference between anxiety and attraction at this point and I have no one to talk to about it. Sorry this has just been killing me lately.

Someone please respond. Let me preface by saying that both my therapists and my mom don’t think I’m what I think I am. I have known I have OCD since I was 14, and I’m 22 now. (I had other forms of it in the past—perfectionism OCD, reverse HOCD (thought I was straight,) etc. But POCD is literally making me feel like trash and so scared and worthless. I can remember sooo many times when I had these thoughts and they weren’t “intrusive” because I didn’t know they were bad. Like so many times. So how does that make me any diff from an actual p********?! Now that I know they’re bad, we’re just going to call them intrusive?! I don’t want to hurt a child ever!! I want to have a relationship with someone my age! (But this can be true for real p********s too!!) I’m so scared, how can I just call these “false attractions” now?? Also, my type is young looking (people my age!) but does that mean I like them because they look child-like?! Please help, I want my happiness back. I’m not a bad person ?

Serious trigger warning here for POCD and suicide. I have these thoughts, urges, and feelings that are terrifying. I don’t act on them and I believe I would never act on them but it feels so real and horrible. I don’t know how this started and I want to believe I am a good person but I’m just so scared that I’m going to do something terrible. And even just these thoughts scare me to my core and make me think, “oh what if I am a pedophile” even though I know I’m not, and I don’t know how to deal with them. When I can keep myself busy it gets easier to forget this stuff, but if I have downtime I can’t get it out of my head. I had a young girl, most likely middle school age, come into my work with her parents today and I was terrified of the idea that I could be attracted to her. I don’t believe I truly am but my thoughts get so aggressive that I don’t even know what to believe. I avoid a lot of things but sometimes you don’t have the option to avoid and it just gets things further stuck in my head and I end up fixating on awful things. I wake up with this stuff floating around my mind and I can’t get it to go away. I’ve even considered just ending it to all to make it easier on myself and to make sure that I never have the opportunity to act on these horrible thoughts and feelings. I don’t ever want to do these things and I know it may sound ridiculous, but the consequences of these actions I haven’t committed scare me as well such as people no longer trusting or loving me, prison, hurting someone else in any way, not being a good person, etc. I just can’t find anything that helps fix this. I have broken down many times due to this issue and I feel like it’ll never go away. I know killing my sled is not the answer and I know I will never act on any of this but the thoughts and feelings are so aggressive that I live in an almost constant state of fear of my own mind and body. I hate this. What did I do to deserve to suffer this way? Why me? Why can’t I just be a normal person with normal human thoughts and why of all forms of OCD did it’s have to be this one? I don’t know what to do. Someone please help me fix this before I lose hope.

Hey everyone! I struggle with POCD and struggle severely with feelings and attractions towards children. It freaks me out and I get so worried and anxious about it. I just keep thinking it’s not normal to get innapropriate attractions towards children. And it’s not just thinking a child is cute because that’s normal but it’s like I get actual attractions or feelings towards kids and it’s the same kind of attractions and feelings I get towards people my age and I’m 19. I’m so scared and worried and I don’t know what to do!! I’m freaking out