NEED HELP ( POCD ) Seriosly loosing it..../Ruining my life

Hello everyone
I am a 19 year old male and have been having some serious anxiety issues for the past 2 and a half years in regards to my sexuality. It all started when i was 16 and suddenly for no reason asked myself if i could possibly be a homosexual. This thought stuck with me and could not shake it and even though i was only attracted to women up until that point i ended up. I mentally made myself think of having sex with naked men and made myself watch gay pornography in order to see if i was gay and if i would be aroused by it and then i would compare it to pornography with women in it.

At first there was no arousal but as time went on i started getting erections from the gay pornography and the gay thoughts even though i didint enjoy them and didint find men attractive in real life. Some days i even believed i was a full on Homosexual and only imagined being attracted to girls.

Well that changed around the time i turned 18 where i stopped thinking i was a homosexual in denial and started thinking i was a pedophile in denial. It started in a very similar way ( With a sudden thought ) Could i be a pedohpile? And again that thought stuck with me and i started obsessing over it. I started imagining having sex with young girls aged 5 all the way to 15 because i frankly was not sure what i was attracted to anymore. I lost all my sex drive/ED and felt no attraction to women and girls my own age anymore which didnt help my situation. I had the urge to look up child pornography ( But never did ) to make sure i was not attracted to children/early teens and watched youtube videos with children in it. All this didint help me at all and only made my anxiety worse. After a year and a half of this i feel like a empty shell of my former self. And honestly looking back i question how i ever was as aroused by women as i was before all this began ( Which was alot ). I over analyze my past everyday to find clues as to who i am, force myself to think of sex with children and teenagers, force myself to watch videos and pictures with kids and teens in them and there has been moments where i have felt aroused which only makes me doubt myself even more.

My question is, what am i to do now? I feel very lost at the moment and am starting to get depressed.

It all started when i was 16 and suddenly for no reason asked myself if i could possibly be a homosexual. This thought stuck with me and could not shake it and even though i was only attracted to women up until that point i ended up. I mentally made myself think of having sex with naked men and made myself watch gay pornography in order to see if i was gay and if i would be aroused by it and then i would compare it to pornography with women in it.

I am currently suffering from HOCD. I got some thoughts about being gay or bisexual after taking a class about LGBT a couple of years ago when I was 20. Since I was obsessing about something else entirely, I was able to brush those thoughts off for the time being. But now those thoughts came back and turned into full HOCD. Although right now my fear has gone from worrying about being gay to just being bisexual, and that feels even WORSE. My mind sees it as, "Okay, I know I've liked women all my life, so being gay is impossible. But being bisexual? HOLY CRAP, WHAT IF THAT IS TRUE?!" Every time you find a way to reason with your fear and try to put it to rest, the OCD comes in and gives you something else to worry about. It morphs into new things.

At first there was no arousal but as time went on i started getting erections from the gay pornography and the gay thoughts even though i didint enjoy them and didint find men attractive in real life. Some days i even believed i was a full on Homosexual and only imagined being attracted to girls.

Oh man, the OCD will make you believe anything. If you obsess over the color purple, you will really start to believe that the color purple is going to hurt you.

Here is what happens to me when I watch porn of any kind: I may watch it the first time, and I don't really have a reaction to it. My mind processes it, and eventually I want to go back and masturbate to it. So when I started testing myself with gay porn and looking at men, I started getting erections. Then I started having "gay fantasies" in my head and got erections stronger than I did in a long time, and that was horrifying!!! But there is such a thing as a groinal response, something I think you should read up on.

Here is a blog by an OCD Specialist that I found useful *mod edit-link removed. hi,don't link to website that provide online service. thank you *

He also responds to comments if you have any questions. Usually takes up to a week or so to hear back.

After a point of feeling anxiety, you may also start to feel "numb." I can't stop looking at men's butts on the street to test myself, and now it doesn't feel any different from when I look at women's butts. Honestly, I am starting to seriously believe that my fear of being bisexual is true. But I know this is just a symptom of the OCD. My brain is not really in a good state and everything feels distorted. This is another good read:

http://www.academia.edu/4075725/Problem ... sis_of_OCD

I over analyze my past everyday to find clues as to who i am

This is one of the worst compulsions that you can ever do. I have been doing this extensively for the
past week and I keep finding more "evidence" that my fear is true. Your OCD will make you over-analyze every little event in your past, digging up things that you would never want to think of in the first place. The truth is, human memory sucks and is completely unreliable. Especially when you have OCD. Every time you look back, the memory is different and will slightly change... it's not going to be consistent.

1. Okay, I think I remember looking at that person and checking them out. OMG I THINK I LIKED IT!
2. Wait, wait... I didn't like it. I was just curious. It's normal. I don't think---WAIT I REMEMBER SMILING!
3. Okay, okay, I think I was just staring off into space and happened to notice that person--WAIT I REMEMBER FEELING AROUSAL.

Seriously, you will get yourself stuck in a loop. DO NOT LOOK AT PAST MEMORIES. It is a compulsion that will feed your OCD.

...force myself to think of sex with children and teenagers, force myself to watch videos and pictures with kids and teens in them and there has been moments where i have felt aroused which only makes me doubt myself even more.

Once again, don't do any of this testing. I keep doing this myself and I feel arousal. Sometimes I tell myself it is arousal, sometimes I say it is anxiety, sometimes I think it's both. Have you ever heard of something called misattribution of arousal? Take a glance at the wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal

My question is, what am i to do now? I feel very lost at the moment and am starting to get depressed.

What you do now is seek professional help. Do you have medical insurance? Find a good psychiatrist or find a clinic where you can get treated for OCD. Try not to see just a normal therapist since they provide talk therapy and will only give you temporary reassurance. They may also tell you things than can trigger your OCD and make you spike. My therapist told me I am not gay but possibly bisexual and that just ruined an entire week. A GOOD professional who understands OCD won't do any such thing.

Thanks for these answers, Usually when i feel aroused and get a erection from child related stuff i get a hand tremor and my heart beats out of my chest. So its definitely anxiety based. Yet i can't help but feel it to be real. I am looking for a psychiatrist at the moment which i have been afraid of doing for a while now in fear of just being labeled a pedophile in denial. But i cant live like this anymore. I fear children everyway i go, if i'm eating and see a child on tv i loose my appetite. I do everything i can to avoid children but sometimes my compulsions are so strong that i feel the need to '' Test '' if there is an attraction.

The funny thing is i look back at my life and cant remember even noticing children before i had pocd, now i can spot them a mile away and get hit with a mini heart attack. Almost like being injected with a needle filled with anxiety and fear. I scan everywhere i go to make sure no children are around or i cant enjoy my time at the mall or at the movies since all i will be thinking about is if i am attracted to them. It has gotten pretty ridiculous

Dayandnight wrote:Thanks for these answers, Usually when i feel aroused and get a erection from child related stuff i get a hand tremor and my heart beats out of my chest. So its definitely anxiety based. Yet i can't help but feel it to be real. I am looking for a psychiatrist at the moment which i have been afraid of doing for a while now in fear of just being labeled a pedophile in denial. But i cant live like this anymore. I fear children everyway i go, if i'm eating and see a child on tv i loose my appetite. I do everything i can to avoid children but sometimes my compulsions are so strong that i feel the need to '' Test '' if there is an attraction.

The funny thing is i look back at my life and cant remember even noticing children before i had pocd, now i can spot them a mile away and get hit with a mini heart attack. Almost like being injected with a needle filled with anxiety and fear. I scan everywhere i go to make sure no children are around or i cant enjoy my time at the mall or at the movies since all i will be thinking about is if i am attracted to them. It has gotten pretty ridiculous

The fear of being in denial is common among all types of OCD, as I've learned from doing a lot of research. Take the risk and go see a psychiatrist (I guarantee you that he won't call you a pedophile). A real pedophile would not worry about testing him or herself when looking at children, or worry about what a psychiatrist would say. That individual likes what (s)he likes and the fear resides more in getting in trouble when acting upon those desires.

Whenever I go out, I have to 'scan' for men or gay men to make sure I won't freak out. Sometimes I will see a man walking in front of me wearing tight pants, so I speed up and walk in front of him. I live in a highly populated city so avoidance is so difficult. But the thing is that avoidance is a compulsion on its own and feeds into the OCD. So if your obsession was with the color purple, avoiding that color would continue to reinforce your fear and you would continue to identify it as a threat. In this case, your obsession is POCD, so whenever you go out of your way to avoid children, you are doing the same thing and fueling the OCD.

After a point, do you ever see a trigger and suddenly lose the anxiety? I'm getting to a point where I see men's butts and, although I know I dislike it, I have almost no reaction to it. Some days I will freak out and get really frustrated, others I will feel pure confusion, etc. But today I am feeling so numb towards them. (And as I typed, I thought of a naked man and my body flinched--another compulsion of mine).

Yeah i can relate to that, Back in 2013 when i had HOCD male butts used to give me anxiety to but there where days where i felt numb and assumed that meant that i had finally '' accepted '' my true sexuality which at the time i thought was homosexuality. My POCD cant seem to make up its mind though, when i had HOCD it was either i was attracted to men or women. POCD stretches over so many age groups for me, children,pre teens,teenagers and sometimes even high school girls ( Makes no sense right? ) But what can i excpect from pocd

Dayandnight wrote:Yeah i can relate to that, Back in 2013 when i had HOCD male butts used to give me anxiety to but there where days where i felt numb and assumed that meant that i had finally '' accepted '' my true sexuality which at the time i thought was homosexuality. My POCD cant seem to make up its mind though, when i had HOCD it was either i was attracted to men or women. POCD stretches over so many age groups for me, children,pre teens,teenagers and sometimes even high school girls ( Makes no sense right? ) But what can i excpect from pocd

What makes male butts such a strong trigger is that the HOCD suddenly makes you see them as no different from female ones. I wish my HOCD just stuck to men or women but it sort of morphed into a fear of being bisexual.

OCD is all about not making sense as it is not a disorder concerned with logic. I guess your POCD has you concerned with all of those different age groups because you are afraid of being a pedophile. A pedophile is generally known to be a full grown adult interested in anyone under the age of 18 (up to high school age). So it's no surprise that you are worried about all of those categories.

How do you keep busy and distract yourself? I noticed I feel a bit better when I go to work and focus on my tasks (which isn't all that easy). I also picked up some cell phone games that ease the anxiety. "Draw Something" is one that helps me relax.

I distract myself with video games and the internet. Which is sometimes hurtful ( Easy to be triggered ) I heard doing sports really helps with the anxiety so i'm thinking of doing that.
Btw
I'm a pessimist by by heart so i've been wondering something that has been nagging at me for a while, after going to therapy and finally feeling better whats to stop the HOCD/POCD to return later in life?

Dayandnight wrote:I distract myself with video games and the internet. Which is sometimes hurtful ( Easy to be triggered ) I heard doing sports really helps with the anxiety so i'm thinking of doing that.
Btw
I'm a pessimist by by heart so i've been wondering something that has been nagging at me for a while, after going to therapy and finally feeling better whats to stop the HOCD/POCD to return later in life?

There are cases where HOCD/POCD or any other forms of OCD can return later in life. That's why you get consistent treatment and therapy for your OCD and watch over it.

But i would hope this cases are rare? Being in therapy until i die seems like a drag :/

Dayandnight wrote:But i would hope this cases are rare? Being in therapy until i die seems like a drag :/

I don't know how common or rare it is since it depends on the individual. Keep in mind that if you are "OCD in remission" and get over your POCD, you don't have to see a psychiatrist on a weekly basis anymore. It could be every other week, once a month, etc. You could always go on a hiatus and take a break for a while and go on a visit once in a while. It seems like a drag but think about this: you have to visit the doctor or the dentist each year, right? This isn't much different. Think of it as going for a check up.