Had a really hard time tonight; found myself obsessing about whether or not I am a pedophile. I have not been officially diagnosed with POCD but I feel that I have it. I am not sexually attracted to children and do not even think about children if not for these times. If I’ve seen a child who I think is attractive or who I find attractive, I spiral. The thing is my mind brings up children from the past who I found attractive and then I spiral downwards. What if I am a pedophile? Why would I think a child is attractive? Why do I remember these children? If I was alone with a child what would I do? That makes me a pedophile. I end up googling pictures of children to see what I feel all the time physically and emotionally. I even thought about looking at some child porn just to see what I’d feel but to be honest I’m not interested in seeing those images. I spend hours on the internet and youtube trying to figure out whether I am a pedophile or not. Whether it really is POCD or if I’m just a pedophile in denial. What if I’m just lying to myself? I’m so tired of this. I get really nervous around children, the other day I actually darted out of my aisle at Walmart because there were children there and I didn’t want to risk feeling anything in case I am a pedo. I even surprised myself doing that. I’m scared to tell the counselor I just started seeing because what if she tells me I am? Please tell me I’m not alone in how I feel. Sorry for the long post; it’s my first time posting and as you can see there’s a lot on my mind. Thanks.

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.

Sometimes I think " do I like kids?" "Would i get aroused if I saw content with kids?""What if I'm a pedo and cant accept it?" "What if I'm ok with these thoughts?" "What if I'm not distressed enough " "What if I enjoy these thoughts?" , i avoid kids as much as i can, i cant look at them bc I'm scared I'm gonna have some groin like response. I keep testing if I'd get turned on or if I'd have some groinal response to sexual scenarios with kids. Sometimes I think that if I took my life this would be over and i wouldn't have to think about this and i wish i doubted something else instead of things like this. I had similar situations just with different topics such as if i loved or found sexually appealing a guy while in a relationship and i kept asking myself those questions for months and i avoided going to school for weeks and when I went I'd cry and have anxiety attacks. I had it with past actions i obessed over and felt the need to exploit every detail and be honest because otherwise i was being a fraud. I had it for sexual things that happened when i was a child. Im not diagnosed with ocd but should i tell this to my local counselor? Can someone help? Give me advice or tell me anything?

I feel like a really terrible person right now, I keep replaying this, and no matter what I can’t remember what happened, it’s like my brain is purposely not letting me think about it. Without wasting any more time, I’ll get into it. Basically, I was at Walmart, and looking at cards with My Dad, I saw anime ones, took pictures of them for my sister, even ones that were anime kids, because I did my best to ignore it, so I looked at a Hunter x Hunter card, I stared at the black haired kid, being all like “ I’m glad I’m not having any thoughts about this, I’m glad I’m having normal thoughts and not thinking anything” I felt happy, then as soon as I looked at killua (white haired kid), everything collapsed. I don’t know what happened, my brain won’t let me remember. But I’ll give bits and pieces. I think that I had false attraction, and something in my head, said “oh, I wouldn’t mind being attracted.” “He is attractive, and I’m attracted to him.” “I remember a girl thinking he is attractive and he is” “ It’s not wrong to be attracted” “ I don’t care about his age” .. something along the lines of that, and now I’m panicking super hard, because I’m worried if I said those things, I feel like I ruined my life that I’m a pe//do and deserve nothing, idk what to do, I feel terrible… I remember when I was having the intrusive thoughts, I was panicking and was worrying, but it kept playing out, and I kept hearing things talk, it was drawn out too long, that now I feel convinced that I was saying those things, I tested it too, and I can confirm that I didn’t say that, but why am I still not convinced? I know I wouldn’t say those things, I was hoping the complete opposite would happen. My brain kept making me feel like it wasn’t wrong and it was okay. Maybe that’s why I’m so convinced I did that. I’m just spiraling super bad right now, I don’t know what to do or what to think, I don’t know if I said that or not… even if I did test it, I genuinely just feel like I said it, and I wanted it, because I still feel uncertain, I still feel like I said it, part of me just wants to be like oh I did and so I can move on, not because I agree with it, I just don’t know what else to do… I’m really scared.