So my POCD started because I had the misfortune of running into a drawing depicting a child being raped (granted it was just a video game character and not an actual real life child) but now I feel like my brain is telling me I enjoyed looking at that and even I can’t tell whether or not I did. I’m just so ashamed and I wish I never saw it. Soon after that I was constantly trying to reassure myself I’m not a pedophile, that I don’t enjoy the thought of children being sexually abused, or that I’ve never been sexually attracted to a child, etc. My thoughts never leave me; I’m stressing out about this literally every hour, minute and second of the day.

Im sorry for a long post but I'm very scared Prior to few weeks ago I didn't have any sexual thoughts regarding children EVER, and if I did then I really can't remember. But ever since I started worrying about the possibility that I might be attracted to them, I just felt severely awful. And it's getting worse and worse overtime. What started as just me worrying that I might be attracted to kids has now turned into a deep belief that there is a very dark and real part of me that is, in fact, a pedophile. I even started having intrusive but pleasurable fantasies about children and it's driving me absolutely sick. I really wish that it's just a very extreme form of POCD and not actually me turning into a monster, but with each passing day my hope is fading away, replaced with pure disgust in myself and unwillingness to live like this. Has anyone here ever went through something similar?

I am not diagnosed with ocd. I began having distressing intrusive thoughts I think last December. It kept getting worse so I was looking for answers and ocd seemed similar to what I was experiencing. I don’t have any physical compulsions just mental ones where I can’t stop using affirmations like “I will never think/do ___” or “I have never thought ___”Then eventually I don’t even know how this happened but I discovered what pocd was, and I started thinking about what if I was a p in the past? I started having thoughts and images related to that and has been extremely distressing. I was afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid of having nightmares related to what I was worried about during the day. It got a little bit better when I realized I’m reacting the exact opposite to how someone who’s a p would. I am upset by these thoughts, I don’t want them, I have no desire to be anywhere near a child or hurt them in any way and I never have. I literally am avoiding looking at any child in public because I’m so scared. This is all in my head. But then recently I don’t know why it got bad again and I became convinced that I was one in the past. I used to play this game called moviestarplanet when I was a teenager and you could date other players on there and I started thinking what if I dated someone younger than me on there. Even though I know there is no possibility of that I can’t stop being convinced that it happened and that I’m in denial and don’t care. And my mind keeps coming up with new things trying to say that I did them and I know they are wildly untrue but I can’t stop worrying and I feel like I don’t want to live with this worry anymore that it could be true or become true. What do I do?

Huge trigger warning related to porn and pedophilia. Please don't read if it makes you uncomfortable. Thank you if you get to read this long post. Something awful happened recently. I was watching porn, I won't say what page because idk if it is allowed, but it is the most famous porn page there is, so you'd think you wouldn't find something so horrifying there. The problem is that one of the automatic pop ups that appeared really terrified me because the girl looked way too young. I'm not sure if she truly was underage, but she looked it, and I can't express how horrifying it is considering if she could have been. I feel like my mind is playing games with me. I can't tell if it was paranoia or reality. My memories are really fuzzy, as I was on a state of shock when I saw it. I remember feeling scared right away and trying to look up how to report it, but the page refreshed on it's own and I never saw the pop up again. I felt so gross for seeing that, and guilty for not reporting it. It was an accident, but I can't help but think that I enjoyed it and that it is my fault for watching porn at all. I am a monster. If this had happened to someone else I wouldn't question it so much, as I know that I didn't look at it on purpose and tried to do the right thing when I saw it. But I already hate myself because years back, when I was 16, I discovered loli. Which is really wrong drawings of young characters. And since then I've been obsessed with the topic and developed pocd. I never looked for those drawings again after that, I dont enjoy them. But I've accidentally found them again on the internet and it's made me feel disgusting and evil; but at least I had the certainty that it wasn't real, until now. I think that this is recent event is further proof of the monster that I already thought I was. After what happened, I immediately contacted a therapist, but tbh, I don't think that I'll ever move on from that. Life isn't looking good right now.