I am having a really hard time with POCD like I get so scared and downright very anxious about and I don’t know what is real or not real. Like it scares me if I am lying to myself and I actually am I pedo. I just want to never think these thoughts or whatever again. Any tips from people who are far along there journey in this section of OCD? Please help with tips and advice.

This might contain triggering content, but I'm also wondering if others have dealt with this similar thought, and if so, how to deal with it? Overall, I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm able to eat again, which I hadn't been able to do because of how much anxiety I'd been experiencing. I'm spending time around loved ones and not just rotting in my room, and I've been able to wake up without immediately being bombarded by intrusive thoughts. When things first got really bad, I'd wake my mom up every night for reassurance, but I haven't done that in a while either. I'm really proud of myself, but there's still this nagging thought in my mind... While looking through others posts on here, hoping to find advice that'd fit my situation, I ended up making things worse. Someone mentioned how they had a fear that they'd purposely search for illegal content (related to POCD). I panicked, and "what ifs" flooded my thoughts. "What if the intrusive thoughts affect who I am as a person, and I do that?" I'm terrified that I'll search for those things, which I know means I wouldn't do it. But then, another person on here said they'd actually looked for those things, and that freaked me out even more. Does that mean it's possible for that to happen to me? I don't want to do that, but I keep having intrusive thoughts surrounding it. I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm just... stuck. I don't know what to do. I've spoken with other people who have the same fears, but how do I manage this? It's not something I've even thought about before seeing those posts. I've been practicing accepting the uncertainty, but I'm really struggling with this one. I hate this. This morning, I woke up, and the intrusive thoughts were back. It's just disheartening.

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?