Worried about the pop-up of a thought again, was really hoping for help

Unfortunately that doesn’t work, if I were to say “whatever you do, don’t think of a pink elephant” you’d think of a pink elephant. Each time you tell yourself “don’t think the intrusive thoughts” you will. You need to do the thing your OCD least wants you to do and think the thoughts. Eventually the anxiety will wear off but you will have taught your OCD an important lesson, that the danger isn’t real. The next time you have an intrusive thought your brain will begin to remember that it has been proved wrong before and over time the anxiety will lessen until it no longer bothers you.

Another component of how I had been feeling about it was I really hoped that it wasn't like I was making excuses for myself. I would never act on any such things whatsoever, but despite that, I don't know if I could live with myself if my feelings were "that way"

When you say you tried to redirect your focus, what do you mean?

I'm 27 now, but this reads exactly how my thoughts went a few years ago. Obviously, I don't know anything about you other than your posts, and I can't promise anything with the 100% certainty that OCD will want. With that said, I am very confident that you are not in any kind of denial about your true feelings. What I realized eventually for myself was that these types of tests are ridiculously unreliable. For regular real-world experiments, you always need a consistent control group, right? How can we possibly guarantee that all of the (literally) microscopic factors affecting our subconscious minds and desires are accounted for in any sort of reproducible way? It's impossible, even more so when your brain is already in a state of sexual arousal beforehand. Your brain and its chemistry will be different every single time you try to test it. Sometimes you'll feel like you have everything under control, and other times you'll feel like your world is crumbling around you. At the end of the day, the compulsions that come with this strain of OCD are not only the spiraling and ruminating, but also the process of doing the tests themselves. At the time, I felt like I couldn't even try the "normal" treatment of just accepting that OCD fears could be true, and trying to live with that uncertainty. It felt like the consequences would be too severe. So instead, I started by just accepting that I would never be able to prove anything to myself through those tests, and I would never reach any long-lasting conclusions through ruminating. After that, it's just a matter of forming the right habits. Try your best to catch yourself when you notice a slip into testing or ruminating on the topic. This is the hardest (and most important) part. It will take a ton of repetition, but every single time you succeed, you will have climbed a little bit further out of the pit. Therapy, of course, can be a massive help if you are able to attend. It's been a few years now since the worst of my thoughts, and I feel better than I could have ever imagined feeling back then. Occasionally, I still have thoughts that try to pull me into the OCD loop, and I don't know if they will ever truly disappear. What I do know is that the less I engage with them, the less powerful they become. Ignoring the thoughts does not mean you are in denial, it means you are healing your OCD. I know how miserable this crap can be, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. You are not alone, and you can absolutely make it through the storm.