Pocd and accepting uncertainty

17f So basically I think you know this whole accept and sit with the uncertainty thing. It applies to pocd as well. Because you can ruminate, test yourself, seek reassurance as much as you want but it will never be enough for you brain to be sure you are not a P. So you need to sit with "Maybe I am a P maybe not" and just don't do anything about it. So sometimes I can do that. But here comes moral ocd. If I accept the chanse of me being a pedophile, isn't it morally wrong for me to be around children? Look at children? Watch movies with children in it? Cause now I can't even look at children even if it was an accident without freaking out and thinking that I'm a monster. Sometimes it feels morally wrong to leave the house because there is a chanse I can meet a child on the street I genuinely don't know what to do. It feels paralyzing at this point. Seems like I can't do anything. Like I even need to cover children on the screen with my hand when I watch a movie. It's exhausting.

HOY

Date posted: 5d ago

I remember changing channels on some occasions when a baby would appear, I blocked most of my social media and web browsers to avoid coming across/seeing photos of kids

emma345

Date posted: 3d ago

Yeah it's exhausting like I can't even watch something to distract myself at this point

aubs

Date posted: 5d ago

hi, i struggle with the same thing. i haven’t been through any kind of therapy specifically for my ocd, so ive tried to learn ways to cope on my own, especially before i was diagnosed. it’s a hard thing to talk about so first of all i wanna say im extremely proud of you for being so open. what helped me when my pocd was at its worst was not fighting the thoughts. as uncomfortable and scary as they might be, the more you try to avoid thinking about it the more likely it will come on stronger and overwhelm your mind. let the thoughts happen and pass, and remind yourself intrusive thoughts are unwanted. hopefully it’ll relieve some of the anxiety!

emma345

Date posted: 3d ago

Hey sorry for late response, for some reason answers to this post didn't show up in my notifications :( I mean yeah see I learned to ignore intrusive thoughts and I almost don't have them, but the "I might be a pedo" is still there and like if I might be, how can it be okay for me to look at children, be around them. Like I can't prove to myself that I'm 100% not a pedo, so idk it feels like I have no good options here

Anonymous

Date posted: 5d ago

By saying "maybe, maybe not" you don't really accept the chance of being a pedophile. Because really, deep down you're aware that you are not one, hence all the cycle of rumination starts, you're fighting a threat that can't be solved, because well... it's not there. The "maybe, maybe not" instead is there to neutralise the thoughts, make them seem unimportant etc. Because that's what they really are, a nasty thing that your brain decided to latch onto and make your life worse. I understand that it's hard, because while I don't struggle with POCD, I had and still have to some extent huge problems with ZOCD, so I know how it feels to struggle with something so taboo... But hey, it's possible to get out of this. I believe we all can. I reccomend you checking out Chrissie Hodges channel because she made videos on POCD and intrusive taboo thoughts in general and they really helped me.

emma345

Date posted: 3d ago

Hey sorry for the late response, for some reason answers to this post didn't show up in my notifications (( I understand what you mean, but "because really deep down you are aware you are not" only makes the cycle start again. Trying to figure out if I'm deep down not. Cause there isn't any chanse to know 100%. Human brain is extremely complex, how do I know there isn't a single part of it that might be attracted to children? I cant. So I don't know if I'm not one deep down. So yeah, for me it's is accepting a chanse that I'm a pedo. And then here comes complex moral question, is it okay for me to be around kids and look at them then? Cause like I've seen a guy who posted about POCD a lot and then after couple years in his new post he said that he went to therapy, and while he does have OCD, he is actually a pedophile and just couldn't accept it and tried to rationalize it with POCD. So how do I know I'm not?

nae nae

Date posted: 21w ago

I'm sorry. Just need to vent. :(

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.

Wessers19

Date posted: 17w ago

Could being exposed to content as a kid affected me in this way?

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.

misereri

Date posted: 17w ago

Urgent: i need yalls opinion

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?

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