Anyone else read about "groinal response" and "arousal non-concordance"? Basically anyone can feel a slight "twinge" of arousal at a random time, but for people with OCD, they immediately latch onto it and think it MEANS something about them. This is how many cases of HOCD, POCD, BOCD, etc begin, I'd imagine. I can have felt something one time 3 years ago and nothing since then, but still be worried it "means" something about me. Or, sometimes that first incident causes repeated intrusive thoughts every time you come in contact with that thing, so it become a self fulfilling prophesy. I can be doing fine for weeks and then suddenly start worrying about one of these again. Anyone else have any experiences similar?

I’ve been feeling the urge to avoid intimacy or purposefully engage (for reassurance that I won’t give into a compulsion) because of intrusive thoughts and fear that I’ll “check/test” my reactions. My OCD is making me so scared that I’ll purposefully think of a child and try to see if I like it. It’s so complicated but I guess I’m mentally checking if I would mentally check during intimacy. I’ve even envisioned myself checking and it’s making me so nauseous. I know it’s a compulsion like any other but the sound of “touching yourself to the thought of a child” sounds atrocious and vile. I’m terrified I’ll automatically start checking next time I am being intimate. I truly feel so worried. If anyone has gone through something similar, I’d appreciate hearing your experience. Or if anyone has any advice?

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.

Does anyone else when they have the thoughts, they feel against it, but they still get arousal or tenglings sensations in the groinal area? Because this is what I experienced today and I feel like crap. This is going to be very triggering for a lot of you, but there are a lot of times that I notice things from kids. For example, there is a thirteen year old kid who looks very developed for her age, and I take notice of (and this already sounds creepy to me) her chest. Today with my thoughts, I imagined as if I were touching it, and although I usually "no no or "I don't want to do that", she is a kid, etc., I still get responses in my groinal area, and It felt very real. Even now, I feel as though I am faking it, even though I groan 😮‍💨 from it, and feel as though I am a fraud. Does anyone relate?