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I am really scared of staring at people‘s private parts and I get the urge to do so. It gets so awkward in Social situations.

Im making this post not because Im currently anxious (even though i am currently triggered) but because i want to make this message for those who currently struggle as much as i do... What I will tell you is that you are loved... you don't have to agree with it... you even can label it as something you disagree with or hate... but you are loved regardless. And you are cared for... and you have people who will show you endless compassion... this is not something I will expect you to get yet, mostly because just like me, you are stuck in the spiral too... I know how you feel because I hate myself too... I hate myself so much that anyone who tells me that they love me, I refuse to believe and brush off because the thought of loving myself has become inconceivable to me. I have POCD and real events OCD for christs sake... I have done genuine horrible things as a 13-14 year old... things I will probably never forgive myself for as long as I live... but this does not have to be you... You might think "ive done horrible things, therefore I cannot be forgiven for the things ive done" and I know because Im just like you... the main difference between us is that I have actually done genuinely horrible things as a 13-14 year old that would make people despise, vilify, and even hate me. Thats not you. You are someone who either A. was a kid when it happened, so you cannot blame yourself for a childs mind and actions, or B. Realize that you are someone here because you understand that what you are going through is something that other people have gone through... you arent alone... no one ever is... but I might disagree because I'm probably the most alone out of everyone. Recognize that this community will fight tooth and nail to help and defend you and recognize that you are in a community full of the 1 percent of people on this planet, that give a shit about you... these people (whether they've blocked me or not) can recognize that your suffering is not the fault of your own, but through the fault of a chemical imbalance in their heads that torments them endlessly with intrusive thoughts, feelings, and even your own past... you arent alone... you never really are in this place... Im the exception however... One last sentence before I go. As the 11th doctor once said... "You are forgiven... always and completely forgiven..." P.S. please don't ask me what my real events were... they were genuinely extremely horrible and I refuse to discuss it with anyone unless its my mom (who knows what happened) or a therapist in the distant future... this isnt about me... this is about all of you.

Upset because a girl I met probably thinks I’m a p because she told me about this job and it involves with kids and I told her that “I can’t work with kids because I get triggered” and she said “ohh 😥” I said “OCD” she said “it’s OK I understand” and now I feel like she thinks that I’m a terrible person or she thinks I’m a p because I cannot fake it even if I need a job I don’t think it’s worth my mental health me going every day at home thinking if I did something to a kid, I would literally lose my mind.

I know confession is a compulsion, and it ultimately feeds into the cycle, but I'm tearing myself apart over this and I want help. I just want to confess everything to my partner, and then we can figure out how to deal with my thoughts together. Should I confess?

I'm pretty sure I have POCD but don't have access to a therapist, so I'm struggling on my own. From the moment it started, it's been in my head 24/7, and I'm not exaggerating. I'm not thinking about something specific, but the theme is just there, ALWAYS and I don't know how to make it leave. It's literally there no matter what, the moment I wake up I think about it and it stays until I go to sleep.

I try not to pay attention to my thoughts. I realized that when a thought pops up for me (sex scene), I go back to it a couple of times to figure out what I am I also felt whether, and I simply decided to let them go..however, I am worried about that feeling of sensation in my groin at those scenes in my head, I am afraid of the fact that I can feel something while I am imagining it and that it is spinning non-stop in my mind! l imagine Just A part and it's constant for some days (like a part of a face, a look or something) the whole scene goes to that I spontaneously imagine and I have the feeling that only that part "turns me on" at the beginning, then the rest... Have you had similar experiences and how to overcome? thank you (edited)

I'm going to preface this with: I just wanna vent a bit. Maybe show you a piece of my and many others' experiences. I just need feedback, not even reassurance. This is what some of if not most of my days look like. I keep asking if it's just OCD. I've been stuck researching and ruminating, anxious, trying to figure out whether I'm having OCD or going into the territory of sexual deviation. My thoughts involve multiple taboos and also fears of sexual abuse. I just can't tell sometimes, and I'm scared. I keep asking myself whether OCD hasn't changed my morals, why I'm desensitized to the unthinkable, and I feel like I am beyond repair. I've read about everything from arousal nonconcordance, to groinals, to even false attraction - and I'm not sure if it isn't just all cope to deny a real problem. Did I get desensitized when it came to Harm OCD too? Sure. Was I panicking? You bet I was. But it once again feels like OCD has gathered enough evidence to make me anxious again. It all feels too real, like too much. I've been anxious for the past few hours just stuck. Pure O is a living hell - if it still is Pure O. I keep looking into my past, asking myself "Does this increase the risk of me being a pervert?" "I've heard childhood trauma can lead to paraphilia - what if that's happening?" "I was exposed to NSFW at a young age - oh my god, what if I end up being a r*pist?". I question every decision I've made, my reactions and behavior, I look for symptoms to confirm or deny whether I am a sociopathic deviant. I avoid certain situations because I fear getting the intrusive thoughts, experiencing attraction or straight up finding out I'm someone I don't want to be (even though all of that sounds absolutely insane and irrational). Whenever I see a trigger, I immediately start checking if I'm feeling something. I can't even look in the general direction of it because I'm afraid I will feel something. I tend to physically avoid triggers. Sometimes I feel like people around me can sense my OCD and look at me because of it, then stay away from me from sheer disgust. Sometimes I'm afraid of even my own imagination - it's very vivid and detailed which would be a great thing.. if I didn't have OCD to use it against me by giving me mental images of the most disgusting and abhorrent scenes imaginable. I'm afraid of doing art because I feel like I'll lose control and draw something deeply disturbing, or somehow uncover some hidden truth about me in the process. It really sucks. I can't be the only one in this, right?? I can't be the first person on planet earth to have gone through this exact torment? You guys, I just need advice / support. Please, to anyone who's gone through something similar, feel free to share your experiences. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, seriously.

this is a long post, so just skip to the bottom if you only want to see my question pocd has been one of my themes for about 15 yrs now. i used to be so scared i would hurt a kid or that i was sexually attracted to kids which was reinforced by groinals. i'm at the point now where i know without a doubt that i'm not sexually attracted to kids and will never hurt a kid, and i very rarely get groinals anymore however since i overcame that part of pocd, now my ocd has latched hard onto worrying other ppl will think i'm a p*. for example, yesterday i was carrying my paddleboard to the boat launch, and a grandpa and his granddaughter were walking near me. i purposefully wasn't looking in their direction, but then the guy commented on my paddleboard. the girl started talking to me too about how she also had a paddleboard and was telling me all about it and i responded enthusiastically to her comments, like "heck yea," and "that's awesome." the guy was still included in the conversation and i replied to him enthusiastically as well. when we got to the boat launch, i told them to have a good day and the guy said "yea you too" and my ocd was immediately like "he thought that interaction was so weird, he probably thinks you're a p*" when i got in the water, i purposefully made sure i was rowing in the opposite direction of them (which conveniently was the direction i planned on going anyway). occasionally i would glance back to see where they were to make sure he didn't think i was following them and my ocd was like "he knows you're staring at her bc he thinks you're a predator." so i made a show of looking behind me in the other direction to make it seem like i was just looking around. i tried to ground myself and focus on the water and my breathing and used my erp skills and within a few minutes they were completely off my mind i'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience with overcoming the main obsession just to have the ocd double down on a different part of the theme? how did you handle it? i know i'll be able to overcome this just like i overcame my previous compulsions, but rn i'm frustrated that i worked so hard and my ocd pretty much laughed and gave me the finger lol

When I'm around that person (sister), I constantly have images of the sexy type and a feeling that I like it.

I’m going to be very vulnerable in the post which is hard because I’m very ashamed of myself. I started a retail job last year in July when I was 18. I had worked as a server for like 3 months prior when I was 17. These two jobs were the first jobs I’ve ever had. My boyfriend and I had also just switched to long distance after about a year of knowing each other and 6 months of dating. Moving here is when my Rocd really started. I worked with people who I found attractive and it really freaked me out having to be near these people everyday and having to interact with them. I had never been in a position like that before ever and this is also my first real relationship. I was in one for like 6 months prior but that wasn’t as serious. I’ve always been insecure and I’ve always cared what others thought of me. I was also so used to being ugly and I was finally pretty. I started caring what cute people thought of me and I’d change the way I walked and my mannerisms to appear more attractive I guess. Once I started my retail job, a specific coworker would go out of his way everyday to interact with me. I found him attractive so I found it really difficult to interact with him and I didn’t really like it. I was mean but in a playful way and that’s how most of our interactions went. Somewhere along the way I became obsessed with the fact that I might’ve cheated or maybe I flirted or maybe I did something wrong and crossed a boundary. I went out of the way to interact with this coworker once by checking out as his register. I also cared about what he thought in regard to my appearance. I never complimented him, exchanged socials, or did anything to make myself seem single, at least that’s what I thought. I never talked about my boyfriend to him either though. It wasn’t because I wanted to appear single, i just didn’t know how to bring it up in a way that wasn’t weird. I wasn’t sure if he would flirt with me or if he was just being playful. He never said anything blatantly flirty. This made me spiral so bad that I ended up shaving my head and eyebrows to make myself ugly, then I went to the hospital. After I came back, he stoped talking to me. I did go out of my way once to talk about my boyfriend and that was like our last interaction. He didn’t even know that I had one. I did tell my boyfriend about this coworker and our interactions though. I told my boyfriend I might’ve had a crush. I’m not sure why I did that but my confessing was out of control. Then a new coworker came and I also found him cool and attractive. I’d basically be myself x10 and I’d try to be more noticeable. I wanted him to think I was cool and attractive and I wanted to be noticed which I know was wrong. I’d make my jokes louder, try to dress a little cooler, I’d draw at my register but I’d try to make it noticeable or maybe I just hoped he’d notice idk. Once I had realized I was attention seeking I completely tried to stop, to the point where I was overly aware of every single thing I did. I honestly struggled working or interacting with any guy at my work. I feel like I just convinced myself these people were attractive sometimes and I’d always become super aware of my mannerisms and I’d try to do everything in a more attractive way. My pocd also started to get really bad. It was too much to handle so I decided to apply for a job where mainly, if not only, women worked. My mental health was literally in the gutter. I’d go to the bathroom multiple times during my shifts, I’d always check my Reddit posts, I’d feel sick for days and I wouldn’t eat. Once I started my new job I noticed a big change in my mental health. I’m so much better now though I have days where I still feel sick or still feel like a horrible girlfriend/person. The problem is, I only work like 10hrs a week and I need to save up for so many things. I literally can’t afford anything right now. I’ve been applying for second jobs but I haven’t heard anything back from any place I’ve applied to over the course of 2 months and I’ve applied to so many. My old job offered me a full time position and I was only working part time when I worked there. I’d get better pay, more money, and better benefits. My boyfriend and I have also been discussing us moving in together and if I went back to my old job, we might actually be able to afford it. I just know that my mental health will be at a horrible risk though. I can’t imagine working in an environment with mostly men again, men my age. I’m scared I’ll start attention seeking and stuff again or I’ll find people attractive again. I don’t want to feel sick every day again. I’m just not sure what to do. I still attention seek whenever walking by an attractive person, like I’ll try to seem more attractive. I don’t know how to stop. I genuinely don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to like experiment or date other people. I want to be loyal and marry my boyfriend. We have so much in common and he’s such a good man.

In the past 2-3 years ive been having extremely distressing thoughts that for a year(towards the beginning of when it started) made me have extreme panic attacks every day and I was extremely miserable 24/7. The thoughts relate to pure ocd and pocd. It happened literally out of no where one day and it hasnt stopped since(it has slowly tapered down or i just got used to it to an extent) I have a thought and i begin to feel overwhelmingly anxious and horrible in general. I begin to question myself as a person. Not sure if im something that I dont ever want to be in a trillion years but never able to truly answer myself. I spend every day an hour and a half minimum looking up ocd symptoms to alleviate the mental anguish and questioning im going through sometimes it can be as long as 4 hours. Im not sure if this is just extreme anxiety but it hasn't stopped for years. Strange thing though is sometimes the severity of my struggle gets extremely bad ranging from a day to a year at a time and then other times its less severe to where I dont feel like its taking over my life unless my trigger (if I really do have ocd) is reminded to me but no matter how severe it gets Its always lingering over the back of my shoulder and can show up at any time. One thing I can say is ive dealt with sever anxiety since I was thirteen to where I would have panic attacks every day (18 now, symptoms for ocd started at around 15) and the level of anxiety I have now related to what im experiencing now is on an unbelievably higher level than what I used to have. Is it possible I could have ocd? If it is possible, does it sound like mine is severe? Or on a lower more treatable level. Please help I dont want to live like this anymore

I’m. Lowkey freaking out a bit at the moment. So I’ve had kind of a thing for hyperfemininity most of my life (really just on men but that’s beside the point). A lot of what I find attractive is similar to Sabrina carpenter’s aesthetic. Like frilly lingerie for example. There was this clip where she was wearing like a babydoll or whatever they’re called and everyone said she looked like a toddler. I thought it was ok bc I’m only attracted to adults, and in this case it’s only concerning my attraction to men, but I was listening to a podcast today about Sabrina Carpenter (bc while I do think she’s very pretty I disagree with a lot of what she does) and the person speaking said she presented as a “sexy baby” and that it was pedophilic. Now I’m pretty frightened because I can’t just go “that’s false attraction” and be done with it. I AM attracted to hyperfemininity and now I feel like a predator for it. I’m scared

can someone with pocd, socd, zocd, intentionally create images in their head and add details, even try self pleasure as a test, conscious or unconscious? Chat gpt says he can't, that it's a fantasy, while before he said he could?! I'm honestly in a panic!

First post, kinda scary. I’ve been trying to figure out for the longest time if this is an ocd thing or something else. For context, I used to have a really big problem with watching porn, starting for about 11-12 yrs old and only stopping a few months ago (I’m 24 now). I constantly have sexual thoughts about nearly every person I see. My family, friends, strangers, and more. It feels completely out of my control and it eats me alive. I have no one to talk to about these thoughts but I feel like if I don’t tell someone I am condoning and accepting these things as good. So I tell my wife. And it breaks her heart every single time. I want to say 95% of the time, I don’t want those thoughts but I can’t say with certainty that there aren’t times I do want to think about porn. Or maybe I don’t. Idk. It’s so exhausting. I’d like some help determining if this is a result of OCD or something else (like porn addiction symptoms or something). Thank you.

I’m 19 I hadn’t had pocd or false memory ocd during this time when I watched porn btw so I trusted my memory back then. I switched back to those themes and now my ocd is telling me I watched immoral porn. I remember being grossed out by titles that had ‘teen’ in it, even wrote down in notes how I’d only watch porn between adults and get off to that. I looked back at my Reddit history/ porn history when I was watching it during that time and it says I clicked on the titles with teen twice, the first time I remember being disgusted and switching to a different subreddit, and the second time covering the screen, now my head is trying to tell me I purposely clicked on those. But I also remember being happy around that time that I don’t associate with gross porn, and that I scrolled past it. Should I confess? I’m so confused, I heard Reddit doesn’t allow that sort of stuff, plus I remember talking to people about how gross that stuff is. Plus I would’ve felt guilty if I actually watched it because I sometimes accidentally click on things with my crappy iPad. Plus I know I’m only attracted to adults because all my crushes are older men and old women, I genuinely can’t bring myself to find anyone under 18 attractive.

So I struggle with my motives. Like I’ll have an intrusive thought that says “what if you did that because you wanted to attract this person?” And then I ruminate and always come to the conclusion that I did it for that bad reason. The thing is when I did that action I didn’t even think anything of it. But now I’m like how could I do that? Maybe it’s my mind twisting things but I genuinely believe I’m a p. I had another panic attack today because of this.

Today my sister sent me a recording of her singing, and in some parts her face "cut me out" somehow because it looks like a sex act. And I went back to watch it a couple of times, because my brain imagines the scene with it and I get a certain feeling and a lot of anger at her for sending me that, even though I know she doesn't know...

It is so hard to think about anything else apart from the thoughts feels like I’m so disconnected from life

I've never shared anything on here before but I read a lot and I will say I am thankful for this community. I have had OCD my whole life. When I was a child I remember having thoughts in my head that made me uncomfortable, although I couldn't remember what they all were. I would neutralize them with a word. I would have nightly confessions to my mom. I do remember a very specific intrusive thought about God that made me panic and I remember exactly where I was. I would wash my hands until they bled to "prevent" something bad from happening. I developed sexual Instrusive thoughts of my brother being romantically interested in me and it scared me so much, I always fought with him for the imagined fear that played in my mind. I have a bit of harm OCD and my biggest nemesis is POCD. I am in ERP therapy but my mind WILL not let me do what I need to work on because I'm living in constant fear or what if this isn't just OCD. I cut out my compulsive prayer after a thought, but my big one is mental checking. I have to gauge the perfect reaction to a thought to figure out I don't feel any way about it. My mind puts myself or children in situations to check how I feel and it's constant. I can't even call that intrusive anymore, it's an automatic compulsion. One "compulsion" I find interesting and wanted some insights on is when I see an adult on tv talking, I imagine them as a child. Not even sexually. Just how they might have acted as a child that led them to their characters personality. I also have trained my mind to think sexual relationships with adults are "dangerous" because they used to be kids. My mind will not stop ruminating, will not stop trying to show me proof of my obsession. I have dreamed of finding life since I was 9, I identify as a straight female, always interested in adult men. I've struggled with this theme since my early 20s and it started out so little, with just random words and images that I dismissed away with my compulsions but now it has spread and over taken my mind with excessive doubt.

There is one Athlete who is a month younger than me and he looks extremely young. Earlier this year I used to like him and his personality a lot but ever since I developed pocd, I keep getting scared over it. Add to that I just searched up on Twitter if finding him attractive is pedophilia or not and there was a tweet which was telling about 19 year old girls lusting over him when he was 15 years ago. I looked at his 15 year old pic thoroughly as a compulsion and he looked young in that but also beautiful/cute like any other teenage boy with pretty genes. I freaked out over thinking that he was beautiful and felt afraid that 'Was it sexual?' Then for a moment I tried to see in replies if anyone says that it is normal for a 19 year old to think a fifteen year old boy is beautiful and not pedophilia. Then I realized that why I was trying to justify a wrong for myself and I'm just so disturbed bcz why was I trying to justify it?