POCD Feel Lost

Hello and welcome to the forums...

Seems to me oftentimes that POCD is more akin to harm OCD themes, than sexual.

All the reassurance you'll get from me is that personally you sound about as much a pedophile as the cat sitting at my elbow while I type this. You're horrified at the idea and while a pedophile might feel self-revulsion, they're not going to be posting in OCD as a rule. They're probably going to be getting their post disapproved because we don't allow paraphilias any longer as a subject. This ain't that kind of post- you're not struggling with something you know you are, you're afraid of being something.

Because I take it that you've like, not got a track record of messing with children, right? And I don't mean when you were a child. That doesn't count.

Feeling as if you think you want to be that way seems to be fairly commonplace here. But it sure sounds as if your heart ain't in it.

Reassurance aside.. I have harm OCD, and I have over four decades of getting intrusive thoughts. I'm going to kill my (fill in the blank- family member, pet- someone or something important to me). I'm going to kill myself. On and on and on.

Emiliano wrote: It feel like I desire doing horrific things for no reason and make me want to rebel against God and Jesus and that I have no empathy or self control.

Compulsions don't help, worrying about it doesn't help. For me, I have to decide that I'm not going to do those things. Nothing is going to make me do those things- I'm not an automaton. And neither are you. I was maybe ten when I started getting thoughts of harming and killing- I thought I was on the verge of being possessed by a demon, literally. I didn't know what OCD was. I didn't know about ego-dystonic thoughts that aren't really 'us'. I also didn't know everyone gets thoughts like that but we're the lucky ones wired to obsess over them to no end.

I defer my anxiety over harm intrusive thoughts. I make the decision to worry about it when I've done it- not before. For me that's the only way to get rid of harm OCD. And this isn't a purely harm theme but surely it overlaps. I get the occasional POCD thought and I squash that bug in a hurry. I'll worry about it when I've done it. It takes a lot of practice but it can be done.