OCD and false attractions.

I have suffered from ocd my entire life and it has always stopped me from enjoying life. I guess fear is a drive force that intensifies my ocd. I am also dealing with porn addiction. Lately, I have been battling POCD and it made my ocd worse. I've never been so scared or so confused my whole life. I don't know if this is a symptom, but its happening a lot. I can't tell people apart. For instance, I can't tell if someone is a teenager or an adult. Obviously, I guess, its a form of testing. think I measure the attraction that way. The thing is, my mind can't stop but I am getting better at that. Its something I worry about like everyday for the last 9 months. I'm gay, and all my life I have heard that gays are pedophiles and stereotypes like that. There comes a point that when you hear it too much, you start believing it. All my life has been filled with worry. Now more so because of this. I already dealt with being gay, but I can't deal with being a pedophile. I remember that before I had POCD, I was fine and functioning normally, with less worry. I think the more I obsess about being attracted to minors, the more it feels I am. I think my brain is playing tricks on me, but OCD gets it. Deep down I know I am attracted to adults and only adults. I just never seem to get the assurance or relief I desperately need.

This is going to bother you , but what you need to do , is tire the thoughts out, and not resist them in any way form or subject.
If you have a thought of action that makes you anxious or panic embrace that very thought or action , as over time it will become less severe and have less power over you.
Usually within the first couple days of doing this its uncomfortable, and you will feel as if it's going nowhere, but eventually within the fourth day you will begin to see it working, you will see your anxiety and fear go away.
With not resisting you are in a sense facing the fear head on , and making it your bitch.

You need to listen to the guy above me. Although personally I would refine his meaning. If it's POCD, you aren't embracing the POCD, you're declaring you don't give a $#%^ about the risk BECAUSE it's OCD. You don't embrace HOCD or POCD or ROCD, you decide you don't give a damn anymore and that you're just going to live a good, decent life to the best of your ability, and that you will not allow bad intentions to be placed on your decision. If you're afraid of HIV, decide you don't give a ###$ if you have it anymore, not because you don't care about the illness, because you can NEVER, EVER, EVER actually figure out or solve ANYTHING correctly under the influence of Pure-O OCD. Nobody finds out their OCD was true. It just doesn't happen.

Exactly, and embracing is a poor choice of words, but what I mean is embracing the cognitive distortions, and thoughts that come along with OCD, because you can only be doing one of two things. Either you want to fear the belief of something you aren't, or face that fear in agreement.

It's like this , lets imagine you have a bully calling you a moron so much, that you start to question whether you are or not, now you can fight that bully , and have that bully fight you back, or you can simple agree with what the bully says so that he'll eventually get tired of what he's telling you, and shut up.

You mean just agree with the thought without checking online? Just trying to be sure what you mean. Sounds hard. I'm doing it.

Just kinda decide you don't give a damn whether you are or not. I think the best way is to decide that you don't know, but probably not, and that you won't carre anymore because it's OCD, no other reason. But you won't care because it's OCD and that literally no problem was ever solved via Pure-O's torturous methods.

I am slowly getting better. I can feel my attraction to guys around my age is coming back. I realize that ocd is very powerful because it can block your common sense and mess with your head in ways that are truly scary. I managed to get a full time job in a retail store and am surrounded by people all the time. I still get ocd spikes when I see an attractive guy. For a second, I usually worry if he's underage. After a while, I start to notice that he's an adult and it goes away. Going to get better at this.