Trigger Warning: please help! Had a kind of rough day after about a week of feeling decent. Question: I work in childcare, I have memories from before the ocd got bad of my eyes kind of naturally looking at butts. And sometimes, it would be kids butts. I kind of remember commenting on it in my head saying stuff like “wow that’s big for a child” or stuff related to that, and one time even a child came over to me and told brought me over to the monkey bars and told me that he could see a girls underwear, and I kind of looked before telling him it was rude to say that, it was kind of like my eyes were naturally attracted to it, kind of like a car accident I couldn’t look away. But I never thought of it again until the OCD started. I’ve never in my entire life pleasured myself to the thoughts of children, it’s never even crossed my mind until the OCD started, but I’m kind of convincing myself I am one. Ugh I’m so sick of this.

I'm sorry you're stressing over this. I've looked into OCD for a while and I've discovered a few things. The biggest thing is humans have about 70 million thoughts going through our heads every day. Most of it is just garbage. It comes from our imaginations and from the world around us, we are constantly thinking without even realizing it. So most of the stuff we think about is JUNK. They dont mean anything. Neither do feelings, urges, or anything else. Another thing is the OCD brain likes everything to be perfect. So when a "weird" thought crosses our minds, we freak! We need to be comforted and the only way our minds know how to is by overthinking, doing research, cleaning, something that soothes us. Our brains mean well, but they are scared and just trying to protect us from the discomfort it creates for itself. With all that said, just about every thought, feeling, urge, or whatever you feel is just your anxiety freaking out. The thoughts and other stuff you have dont mean anything :) One last thing, our brains like to branch off from thought to thought to thought. If you have a revised intrusive thought that wont stop bothering you, it's still just a thought. It means nothing. Hope this was helpful :)

I have the same thoughts and have false memory of doing something bad when a child in my class was touching himself under the table. When my ocd kicked in badly over a holiday break, I started questioning my intentions towards children- did I fancy them, why was I thinking like this, do I want to touch them inappropriately, am I sexually attracted to children. So frightening. Never before thought such intense things. Ocd is a bugger!!! Makes you question your morality, just in case you trip up and do something completely out of character. It takes away the trust you have in yourself. It’s a monster!!! The fact that many people experience this shows that it is an illness and not a reality. X

awesome ^ but also i have the SAME thing. you’re not alone.

That helps a lot. Thank you so much

I agree with what @rbheaton said, very helpful. Ocd thrives on trying to figure out what a thought MEANS when in truth it doesn’t mean anything. It’s the junk channel. I like the analogy of traffic going by. Just let the thoughts pass on by like cars.

and i also work with children

How has it been with you?

@socks23 it is most definitely an illness! What you said could describe me

Socks23. I hear ya. Although the way it presents to me is different ( interfering thoughts during sex, feeling like abuse is happening when I’m not I’m just with my wife,getting stuck on images of a very particular act happening), it’s all the same. The brain going haywire over something it has deemed a threat. An interesting insight I have had recently is just how many weird thoughts I have had for some years where, within them, I was trying to control super specific outcomes, leaving nothing to chance. It seems it has to get into extreme violence, something sexually perverse or deeply religious for it to get us into therapy. But the process is there churning the same pattern - just now on deeply disturbing topics. The worst thing I could, or would even think about doing, would be to abuse a child. God........ It’s incredible that the brain can torture you with your actual worst nightmare

So true. I’d had obsessions growing up I think over things not being good enough, about killing a stranger, about being pregnant even though at the time I was still a virgin. Yet I didn’t see it as silly but as truth and a reality and I remember being so so upset and distraught about how my life was going to terrible. Growing up with lots of neglect and uncertainty, with a mum with bipolar has made my mind, I think, more susceptible to thoughts of life going horribly wrong or me losing control of my life. Then losing my parents and boyfriend at the time, plus my grandma just shook my world and then becoming a teacher further played on my anxieties of not being good enough, not doing my job well enough, because the culture of where I work is very much stiff upper lip and pretend all is good and don’t question anything- little support with behaviour of children etc and being chastised for doing things in a certain way and then for that way of doing things to then be invented by someone in management and then becoming the status quo and you’re like that’s what I said back then yet you said it was wrong. All comes down to not being able to voice opinions and trust your judgements. X