- Date posted
- 6y ago
- Date posted
- 6y ago
This doesn’t mean you’re a pedophile. You’re questioning whether you are or not. Pedophiles don’t question if they are a pedophile or not. You are feeling guilt/disgust over the thought. Pedophiles don’t feel disgust/guilt over the thought. The thoughts are not the problem. It’s your reaction to the thoughts after the initial disgust/guilt. Recognize that you had a thought. It gave you this feeling of disgust/guilt because it’s not part of your character. Then you have to let it go. If you ruminate over it question it over and over you are going to end up in the rabbit-hole. Every time you catch yourself ruminating, identify that this is OCD because it is associated with the feeling of DOUBT. When I have intrusive thoughts about harm, pedophilia, or false memories, I recognize the emotion and also the overall feeling of doubt as OCD not as a REAL question. It’s not real. It’s OCD because if it was real there would be NO anxiety, disgust or doubt. Once you identify it as OCD, then tell yourself, this isn’t a real problem, this isn’t important it’s “spam” and refocus. Think about something else. Find something interesting to think about. Give your brain something else to do. THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE MOST DIFFICULT STEP. I know it’s hard. I know it seems impossible. But keep trying. Over and over and over. Identify your compulsions and eliminate them. Mine are ruminating, reassurance seeking and avoiding. I have 4 kids now so I can’t avoid. I’ve stopped asking for reassurance 95% of the time and I’ve noticed the intrusive thoughts going way down. I am still working on the ruminating which is more difficult to handle because it’s all internal, but I’m doing better. I know deep in my heart that these thoughts are telling me what I don’t want to happen. How much I value my family and care about children and people in general. That’s why it breaks my heart and that’s why it breaks yours. Hang in there. Take it one step at a time and work on stopping your compulsions. Eventually your mind will get the message that these thoughts are not important and are total bullshit.
- Date posted
- 6y ago
I would say that it wasn’t necessarily an intrusive thought at the time, just you spacing out and being a normal human noticing the world around you. BUT the ruminating and revisiting months later is definitely an intrusive thought. With an uptick in OCD symptoms it makes total sense that you would start mining your own life for signs of this threatening possibility. With OCD we’re all shitty detectives led by an inexplicable feeling of guilt.
- Date posted
- 6y ago
I think OCD wants to put our biggest fears in our face. At least it you know what you’re biggest fear is so you can start to recognize it when your intrusive thoughts pop up. I think that not letting it trick you is half the battle. I wish you the very best that recovery has to offer❤️
- Date posted
- 6y ago
Thank you guys so much ❤️
- Date posted
- 6y ago
Like how you stage that Fivel!
Related posts
- Date posted
- 15w ago
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.
- Young adults with OCD
- Students with OCD
- False Memory OCD
- Mid-life adults with OCD
- "Pure" OCD
- POCD
- LGBTQ+ with OCD
- Date posted
- 14w ago
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.
- Date posted
- 12w ago
Being exposed to taboo p*rn as young as first grade ruined my life and now ocd is making me pay for it. I have so much guilt for being a child/teen and looking at taboo stuff, and it was all fictional or anime or whatever but it was still so so gross. and I didn't realize It because I had been used to it at so young 🫠 I think what haunts me most is when I was a kid/young teen (like 12-14ish) and didn't have access to p*rn I'd imagine stuff similar to what I'd seen in the art. I can't even believe I'd imagine scenarios involving kid characters or whatever because it had been so normalized to me and I assumed it was normal since it was fiction. I'm 23 now so it's been a decade since I've done anything like that and I've never had the urge to since but still. I've NEVER been attracted to kids or had any urges or anything ever, even when I was addicted. The thought makes me want to vomit, I'd rather die than associate anything sexual with kids/minors and I think people who groom or assault kids are vile. But I still feel like the fact that I imagined stuff similar to the things I read sometimes when I was young is proof I'm a p*do. I don't think people would believe me if I said I'm not. I just feel like I don't deserve to live or that if I do, I'm living a lie. I know 'I was a kid too' but even when I was 13/14 I read/imagined stuff with characters younger than me because I thought it was normal. I'm so disgusted. I've had this theme for so long I'm starting to wonder if ocd is right. I feel too ashamed to tell my therapist.
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