- Date posted
- 3y
- Date posted
- 3y
I just started mine for POCD. I started with pictures. Specifically of my siblings to start off. Another ERP excerise would be watching movies or TV shows involving children. Another ERP exposure for me is going to the park and watching the kids play. Since I have concerns about being a Pedo one of my higher level exposure is going to be watching a documentary on actual pedophiles. It just goes off by your lowest level anxiety to your highest. You get to pick and chose what kind of exposure you want to and your therapist may recommend some. The point is to just let the thoughts sit during an exposure. You also can’t do a compulsion after because it defeats the purpose of the exposure
- Date posted
- 3y
(found u hi lol) i think i am the person this post is referring to and yeah boy howdy it is not fun.
- Date posted
- 3y
When I first started having the thoughts I had to know if I was or wasn’t. Starting erp gave me clarity but it is on the back of my mind. You just have to learn to live with the uncertainty. I know it’s hard because you just want an answer. It’s hard for me I still struggle
- Date posted
- 3y
Hiiiiiii <3
- Date posted
- 3y
Man I am not good at using this app. But yes hi it is me and yes you are the person
- Date posted
- 3y
So basically I am a mother of two and this theme came out of nowhere and it made me so depressed and terrified that I stayed away from my children. But then I decided I would not allow this to keep me from being a mother because I love my kids with pure motherly love. So I cuddled them, and hugged them, and played board games with them, and I started to realize my thoughts were completely irrational. Spend time with the children in your life, you’ll start to see how silly that was
- Date posted
- 3y
Did it go away completely for you?
- Date posted
- 3y
@Anonymous:,( Unfortunately I can’t say it went away completely even though it came out of absolutely nowhere. But exposure therapy absolutely works because I take care of my children every single day, I bathe them, change them, lay with them to go to sleep, and I realize that I literally have nothing to worry about. I know myself. I know who I have always been. I know that my worst fear is my children being abused and the thought makes me physically ill. So it makes it so much easier to laugh off the intrusive thoughts.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 24w
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?
- Harm OCD
- POCD
- Students with OCD
- Mid-life adults with OCD
- Older adults with OCD
- Young adults with OCD
- Real Events OCD
- "Pure" OCD
- Date posted
- 24w
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
- 21w
Does anyone else struggle with this? It's been the main thing powering my POCD, and it's only been getting worse. Especially when I see posts online of people sharing their personal stories relating to CSA, specifically grooming. It's so triggering now, but before this theme developed, the most I'd feel while reading posts like that would be disgust targeted towards people who did those things. Now, my first thought is, "What if I do something like that one day? What if I've done it before and I don't remember or didn't know I was doing it?" I have many, many different intrusive thoughts or worries related to this theme, but it all circles back to this specific fear that I'll become like the people who hurt and took advantage of me. Does anyone have advice for this? I'm not sure if I've asked a similar question in the past or not, but is this something I need to deal with separately before beginning ERP for OCD? I'm just curious and also lost on where to begin with all of this. I'm just glad I'm able to begin working through all of these issues now, rather than later in life when I'd probably have a lot more responsibilities. Anyways, any feedback is appreciated! 🤍
- POCD
- "Pure" OCD
- Real Events OCD
- Older adults with OCD
- OCD newbies
- Young adults with OCD
- Mid-life adults with OCD
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