My biggest fear is subtly molesting my daughter. Like not outright and blatantly, but like subtly. if that makes sense. Like taking advantage of diaper changes and baths for my own quiet sexual satisfaction. That is my biggest fear/obsession. My biggest compulsion is avoidance of washing her in the bath. My therapist says to wash her deliberately and slowly with no mental reviewing or thought suppression, or avoidance or anything. He even suggests purposely triggering groinals. I haven’t had the courage to do any of this. However the other night, I did. I thought I was going to wash her without any avoidance. But then my brain said “ooo yes take advantage of this situation. You can use this to get any weird urge you may have had in the past out of your system” and I didn’t have any anxiety about this thought, and I continued to wash her regardless. I feel terrible!!!! I’m overcome with so much guilt. I feel like these thoughts were the motivation behind my action. Where do you draw the line? I am so distressed.

Started therapy recently and I feel like I’ve gone from being triggered every few days to every few hours. It’s like, I can’t even get out of bed for an hour before something new happens. I’m a stay at home dad with a 2 year old. This morning, I hesitated checking his diaper by patting him, just because any sort of touching in his diaper area makes me anxious or causes intrusive thoughts. But, I did it anyway, only for my brain to then go, “His diaper is always wet in the morning, why did you need to check?” I have this huge fear of accidentally doing something inappropriate or harmful, so any kind of touching, that isn’t completely necessary, feels harmful. At this point I’m just trying to survive between therapy sessions, but the risk of sitting with uncertainty with this theme, feels so strong and I feel so irresponsible by not trying to “figure it out”.

Hi NOCD community, I was hoping to get some advice from fellow sufferers. In December we welcomed the first baby into the family, my beautiful niece. Since then, my POCD has been awful, which I know is probably very normal. Last week, in the middle of a very high stress day in my family, I was changing my niece and as usually happens, I got intrusive thoughts about awful things people do to babies when changing them. The thoughts were so harrowing to have as I was also changing her at the exact same time, and I felt my hands just quickly want to finish patting her dry before putting her nappy on, and for some reason, my heart dropped with that hand movement, because I was afraid that I had acted out the awful thoughts in my head, in a moment of mania because my morals, values and heart do not align with abuse of any kind, especially to children. My niece is my everything, and I know I would never want harm to come to her in any way, shape or form. I love her endlessly. I am having therapy, but have only had a couple of sessions. But, I cannot shake the 'what if'. I am tortured over trying to remember what it was I did that made my heart drop, but I can't, and its getting fuzzier and fuzzier the more I try to remember. Could anyone offer any advice on this please? Thank you.

I had to give my daughter a bath and wanted to help my wife bear the responsibility also read online pocd to not avoid bathing. I told myself I am going to bathe my child because im a good dad. As i bathed her i went to wipe her arms and torso. I was going to get her armpit and arm but with the sponge I wiped her chest erogenous area. Then i got anxious and did a compulsion and said “im sorry”. Then ocd said whyd i wipe there ni shouldve wiped her arm or armpit. Was i doing anything inappropriate. Or ocd said not to wipe there and I did so did i do anything inappropriate or with inappropriate intent. I hate having pocd and living parallel with this voice in my head. I know my intention wasnt inappropriate i even prep talked before and did the compulsion of apologizing after wiping. Now im questioning whyd i wipe there first before her arms and armpit since ocd told me to avoid her chest. Then i worry did i have ocd intrusive thought saying i wanted to wipe there and if i had this thought and i wiped there than it means i acted on the thought. I know i wouldnt do anything inappropriate to my child and i know my intent wasnt wrong.