Existing fetish triggering my POCD?

Hello, and welcome!

For those of us who are prone to anxiety disorders, it's been my own experience, and what I read here, that it often doesn't take too much to get caught in a vicious cycle. One moment of 'hey, did I like that?'- and a person will find themselves overthinking everything.

We can't allow discussion of paraphilias in PF- if you sounded like a pedophile, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

While fetish also can't be the main subject of a thread, it is a factor in your anxieties, so within those fence lines, I'll say that you're not the first person to have an otherwise innocuous kink or fetish, who finds their anxiety starting to spike, using that fetish to propel a person into something like POCD or HOCD.

You know you're not attracted to kiddos. But sexuality is a very fuzzy thing- which my personal opinion is what makes it so easy for OCD thought behaviors to use sexuality to create anxiety. We like things to be 10,000% black or white- sexuality and sexual desires, thoughts, etc., are definitely not so well defined. I think it's very easy to look at something that is sexually enticing- even though the main focus is on something that is very taboo for you, like a child- and still feel sexual feelings that have nothing to do with having attraction to the child. Because, sex is sex. If you have a giant(ess) fetish, then I don't think it's too surprising that any giant will be something you glom onto. For the person without OCD thought patterns, I'd imagine they'd be like, 'oh, toddler' and think nothing out about it. It's a non-issue, because they're not a pedo, and they know they're not. OCD, being the Doubting Disease, will have a field day with that, though. You know that.

Best advice I can give is to first off, don't check. Don't check, that never helps anything, because you'll never be able to prove anything by checking. OCD won't let you. You're going to have to learn to manage those anxieties. When ever I feel POCD tickle my brain, I remind myself that I'm not a pedo. I don't look at things I shouldn't, I don't have any kind of paraphilia with a focus on children, I've never done anything to a child, and never would, and have very harsh personal opinions of anyone that does SA a kid. I remind myself of those things, and I leave it at that. I've learned not to let myself ruminate on what I might do. I remind myself of what I do in the present. What I've done in the past. OCD is all a bunch of what-ifs. I'm more of a harm OCD kind of thinker, and that's how I deal with intrusive harm thoughts or fears I will harm others. If I were a killer, I'd already have killed. Well, ditto messing with little kids. If I were going to do that, I'd have done it. I haven't, I don't, I don't want to, therefore, I'm not going to. No matter what my OCD might scream at me.

So, no checking, remind yourself of your real-world behavior, not the OCD nightmare that goes round and round in your head, and also, any content online that makes you feel a little worried- like that giant todder- I'd just avoid that kind of stuff. While, at the same time, not avoiding the mere fact of being around real kiddos in the real world, because you're not a pedo, and there's no reason to avoid. People sometimes let just the mere presense of a kid trigger their OCD. Well, children are everywhere, and a person can't hide from them indefinitely. You know you're not a pedo, so remind yourself of that whenever you start to get anxious.

Just the same way I'm not going to hide all the things that could be used as weapons around me, just because I get intrusive harm thoughts. My intrusive harm thoughts can go to Hell, I'm not going to act in any way that's going to fuel my OCD. OCD would love for me to act on ritual compulsions, and I have to try not to let OCD do that to me, because that just reinforces the OCD. I'll worry about doing something terrible, when I do it. Not before. I have my lifetime of not doing terrible things on my side to prove my intrusive thoughts, are just thoughts, nothing more. With OCD, we do have to separate ourselves from our thoughts, and refuse to be defined by them.