POCD, I think

Hey, everyone
I'm a 16 year old gay guy struggling with (what I think that is) POCD. It started when I was watching a show and a kid was molested, and since then I can't feel normal. I do find some kids pretty and for my brain that is enough reason for me to be one of those pedophiles.
There was a time I couldn't feel like a normal person, and couldn't even look at myself in the mirror without feeling disgust, and there was a time I had an erection and spent atleast 2 days crying about it.
At the beginning I used to check A LOT. I used to google about pedophilia on Google, to see if it matches what I'm feeling, I used to compare photos of adult men in underwear and kids in underwear... When I was 11 I had a crush on a 9 year old and when I was 13 I had a crush on a 12 year old, maybe those could be signs.
But not knowing if it's real is eating me alive. I just want this freakin nightmare to be over so I can move on with my life but it feels impossible. I thought about getting therapy but where I'm from you have to pay for it and I don't have money to pay for it.
Also, I've always known I was gay. Ever since I was a little kid, I never liked girls. Sure, I dated girls, but I wasn't attracted to them. The first boy I fell in love with was 17 years old, and I was 12 (it was platonic lol).
I just need answers. I need to be sure. I need to know I'm not mentally sick.
I've talked to pedophiles on these anonymous chats... One of them told me I don't fit the criteria of one, but it still isn't enough for my brain.
And when I watch the "thing starting with p", I always worry too much when one of the guys looks young and start panicking.
Please, help me, I don't know what to do. I know if I'm sick, I don't know to stop giving my thoughts power. All I know is I need help.

When you was 11, you had a crush on a kid two years younger...

When you was 13, you had a crush on a kid a year younger...

And you were a kid- you are, a kid- yourself.

I think you're overthinking this. You already know checking is bad juju. Please try not to check. Just finding a child pretty, isn't grounds for being a pedo. Please try not to stress the occasional attraction for someone younger, that doesn't count. Look, I can have a sexual dream with a kid in it, and wake up stimulated, but it means nothing. Nothing. Why? Because I know I'm not a pedo. I think you know you're not one, either.

A person can fantasize about all sorts of things. They can have sleeping dreams. But we're defined by what we do, and what we really desire in our hearts, and if you had an actual paraphilia, I think you'd know it, deep down, the same way you know you're gay.

Try not to torture yourself. These are supposed to be some of the happiest years of your life, don't let your mind ruin that.

Are there no resources you can go to for a little counseling? of course, it would help to talk to someone who is knowledgeable about OCD. Because it's easy for folks who don't understand it, to not know the difference between thoughts that are part of our core being, and the intrusive disturbing thoughts that folks with OCD tend to get.

I can't get help from a therapist, counselor or whatever because where I live you have to pay for it, and I just can't afford it.

I know I tend to overthink things but it's never been this bad. Once I was obssessed about failing my grades but it was gone when I knew I didn't fail. I need this fear to go, it's eating me alive.
I try to tell myself that I am a pedophile, so my brain will just stop and it would go away, but it just won't. It's been 7 months and I can't take it anymore.

With OCD, we want to always put the cart before the horse.

I have a lot of harm thoughts, as part of my OCD. It took me a long time to not be bothered my intrusive thoughts that I'd hurt others. Part of that, was deciding to not care, if I ever kill anything or anyone.

Which isn't the same as 'accepting' that I'm a murderer. I'm most certainly not, and ain't gonna 'accept' that. I think people use poor word choice. I think it's more accepting that the thoughts are going to be there, than accepting you're what you fear.

I accept that I'm going to get random thoughts in my head, to harm. The OCD part of me wants to translate that into a desire to do so. Or that I won't be able to help myself. Which is crap. I've had intrusive harm thoughts for 40 years plus. And have yet to act on them in any form not even approaching significant. Once I realised I had, in fact, gone all that time without shooting or stabbing or killing. Then I'm like why am I worried? Screw it. Screw the thoughts. I made myself not care when the thoughts come into my head. I also decided that I would worry about killing someone, when I am standing over their dead body. Not before. I'll cross that bridge, when I get to it.

Those practices made life a lot easier for me. Now I don't waste much time on those intrusive thoughts. And they occur generally less, than they used to. There was nothing magical in what I did- it just takes practice to not care. You have to intentionally not give a rat's ass.

If I were struggling with POCD- and my brain will sometimes try to go in that direction, but I nip it in the bud- then my attitude, if it is anything like my harm OCD, is that I'd worry about being a pedophile, when I find myself molesting little kids. Not before. Thought comes into my mind that I'm going to, well screw it. Don't care. It's just a thought, it's not action. Actions are what counts. Thought that aren't put into action, are thoughts that stay unborn.

Methinks you worry too much about the youth of the actors in the porn. You're pretty young yourself. I don't understand why it seems a lot of the POCD posters in here are, themselves, teenagers or just out of it. You're supposed to be interested in youth and beauty. You're yourself still the subject of age-related paraphilias. It bothers me, that someone young is torturing themselves, so.

How do I accept my thoughts? I would do anything to get out of this nightmare, to be sure that I'm a good person. I fon't want to waste my youth torturing myself.

Well... I think of OCD intrusive thoughts as a squatter, living in my brain. An imp. It eats fear. It eats fear, grows stronger, tries to make more fear by feeding me harm thoughts. So what you want to do, is starve the monster- refuse to let it make you afraid, and it grows weaker, and less able to make you afraid, in the first place.

I can't stop the thoughts from coming. But I can, with practice, decide not to worry about them. In the case of being afraid I was a pedo, I suppose that would involve making a decision to not care if I was a pedo. And not care when the thoughts pop up that I like this, or like that, or am a pedophile because of this, or because of that.

OCD has tried that crap on me- and I slap those thoughts down as fast as they pop up. I refuse to entertain them, I refuse to act differently because of them, I refuse to perform compulsions. I'm not a pedo, and I'm not going to let myself worry that I am.

Thanks, I'll try!

Also, I just remembered about something... When I was 13/14, I used to read these yaoi (basically, gay hentai) comic books, and one day I read one where one of the boys was really young, and now I just realized it was a shotacon (prepubescent or pubescent young boys) and I did really like it, but I didnt know about that at the time. I thought he just looked young because of the art, and now I keep ruminating about it.

strugglingwithsmth wrote:When I was 13/14, I used to read these yaoi (basically, gay hentai) comic books, and one day I read one where one of the boys was really young, and now I just realized it was a shotacon

So when you were an adolescent, you read stories centering around...

You know how that sounds, right? OCD, desperately trying to pull the pedophile boogerman out of thin air. Reading pubescent erotica, when YOU are at the same stages of life. Technically, even at 16 you're still barely in the puberty window, acc'd to Wikipedia.

Just let it go, sweetie. Try and let it go. And then, when you stop worrying, be prepared for OCD to try and make you worry, over the fact, that you're not worrying.

I know what you mean, but the only one I read was about a boy that looked like a child...
If it is OCD, how do I decide to not care about being a pedophile? I tried telling myself that I don't care, but I don't believe myself

Also, shotacon is the same as lolicon, but with male children. I would like to say again that at the time I wasn't thinking about age, as in, enjoying it because it was a kid. Just imagining me doing that again make me sick and my belly hurts.