I could have wrote this myself! I totally can relate to you. I have always had a mild form of ocd, I’ve had health ocd, and pure ocd as well as general anxiety and low self confidence. But after a traumatic experience where we discovered a family member who had married into our family was a paedophile and then another similar incident at my child’s school club, it that led to me having a traumatic dream about the person from the after school club asking a child to keep her abuse a secret that literally traumatised me to the core. How could I dream that? Why is that even in my head? What does it mean? Is it a warning? I became obsessed with trying to understand this dream (it actually gave me PTSD) i was Googling trying to find answers about my dream and came across a website discussing intrusive thoughts and particularly about abuse and my traumatised brain just latched onto it and I began to experience those ocd thoughts that person had described. I’d never even heard of intrusive thoughts before. I would do anything to go back in time and never have googled that fucking dream. It has literally destroyed my life. I began to have intrusive thoughts about child abuse and I cannot even describe how much it has utterly destroyed every semblance of happiness in my life. This progressed to me believing it must mean something bad about me. So my ocd is constantly trying to make me think I’m a bad person. It’s even given me intrusive thoughts about my family members and kids which drove me to attempt to take my life. And the most frustrating thing is while all this is happening I KNOW it’s not true! The thoughts terrify and torment me, I know who I am, I’m shy, gentle, maternal, caring , kind etc and it’s literally the total opposite of who I am. I cannot abhor to think of anyone suffering let alone a child. Yet that smidge of ‘what if’ has demolished me. I ask myself all the time how can something not true, created by my brain and imagination cause so much damage to me. I don’t have the answer. What I do know is ocd latches on to what you care about the most and distorts it and twists it. I have my assessment from this noocd tommorow so I hope I can salvage my happy life back. And then I want to help others from suffering like this. I wouldn’t even wish this on any good person and it seems, us good people tend to suffer the most. I know this won’t help you and I actually get terrified about reading other people’s stories on this thread cos they actually trigger me and I worry I may ‘absorb’ their form of ocd too but I hope this helps you see you are not alone. I get you.