POCD Is there hope??

Hi everyone, I am about to start therapy for my pocd and you could say that i am less than hopeful about it. There is many reasons for this like ( What if i'm actually a pedohpile etc. ) But the biggest one is about the future. I have read many success stories about people who beat HOCD ( Fear of being a homosexual, which ironically i used to have ) but cant find a single one on the internet about people who had severe pocd and got over it, which worries me. ( Is it beatable? )

Like any other diseases relapse is a possibility, so when i think about the future i think of myself happy with a wife and family and then suddenly BAM i start obsessing about being a pedophile again because of something triggering i might have come accross. I know this worry is part of POCD but i could need some help now going into therapy with a positive attitude. Is there anyone out there with a success story about how they had pocd and got over it? Or anyone who have heard about it?

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Hey Dayandnight. Hope you're doing well today. I know how debilitating POCD can be and I have the same fears and worries regarding treatment and the future. Unfortunately I can't reassure you bud. You know what I thought today, after really stepping back from this condition and trying to reach an unbiased conclusion?

That excessive worry might just be my way of coping with a sexual attraction I feel toward children. I guess in a way I am more willing to accept that I do experience a degree of sexual attraction and arousal.

Why am I considering this? Well, it's hard for me to accept that the penial responses are completely anxiety based. Why don't I get penial responses when worrying about other things excessively as I'm prone to do? And why do the physical responses feel so much like straight up arousal sometimes?Also, it makes sense to me that all humans have SOME degree of sexual attraction to all other humans. It's like a scale: are you more sexually attracted to a table or a baseball bat? A chair or a sweatshirt? A dog or a curtain? A child or a lightbulb? A child or an iPad? A child or a dog?

It would be strange to me if anyone answered something other than child for the last three...

This is also evident when adults see a child and say something like "he's going to be a real looker!" or "she's gonna be a heartbreaker" Does that mean they want to pursue a sexual or romantic relationship with the kid? Does it mean they're thinking heavy thoughts? No, they're just identifying pleasing characteristics in the kids looks, and furthermore, relating them to pleasing characteristics they have previously identified in adults.

So in a way it's normal and accepted that everyone has a degree of the suspected attractions that so worry and distress us. Now my question is, has our OCD identified a normal attraction and twisted it to the point where we can't live with ourselves, or has our OCD identified an elevated attraction and influenced us to constantly worry and agg about it?

When asking this it's important to note that a lot of pedophiles are very comfortable with who they are.... They know they will never harm a child, they know they have an attraction, and they by no means fret about it to the point that OCD sufferers do. In fact, I've heard multiple times that the thoughts are only natural for some people and not a problem at all, "it's the actions not the thoughts that cause a problem." I agree with this logically, but for some reason - I know that I will never harm a child - the idea that I possibly have these kinds of thoughts is emotionally torturing. Why? what makes me less deserving of accepting that thoughts are thoughts and nothing more than other people? How can I accept others for who they are yet be so hard on myself? It's the OCD man, it's a worry/anxiety condition. So what we need to do is try and step out of the OCD and just take things for what they are.


When I do that I suspect that the attraction, sexual attraction, is there. Again, I don't know if it's a normal level of attraction or an elevated one... but these days I'm suspectIng it's a little elevated.

Somebody in the paraphilia boards gave me some good insight... it made me realize that deep down, we do know if we're pedophiles or not. Straight up, if given the opportunity without any legal or moral trouble for any party, would you sooner sleep with a child or an adult of your choosing?

For me, the answer is a resounding..... adult! I realize that my level of attraction towards adults is very clear and powerful, and that my attraction toward children is uncertain at worst. So in the most widely understood definition of the word, I am 100% not a pedophile.

But then I come back to if I have a normal level of attraction that my OCD has exploited or an elevated one, and just the idea of having an above average degree of sexual attraction toward children is nerve wrecking.

At the same time, that is the point where I start to get hopeful. Come on, really? Is somebody walking around with a thingamabober or a whatsimacallit measuring people's attraction level? Realistically we can only expect it to be different for everyone, and if it's a little higher for me, well who cares honestly. Only a total prude or an excessive worrywart (read: me) would chastise me for a 10% attraction level when 5% is the norm. Haha, I'm just trying to say, if this is the case I'll be able to stop beating myself up over this.....


But, well.... all this aside, I am also distressed by what is probably POCD, some days are worse than others, many theories have come and gone..... and I hope we find some answers soon :/

No matter what, I always circle back to the point of total confusion, doubt and depression.


Well, hope that this post helped you in any way or was at least interesting to read. Thanx for giving me the opportunity to vent bud.

Have a good night.

Thank you for your comment. I agree with you, pedophiles usually know who they are from when they enter puberty and devolop a attraction towards children. But you want to know what the cruel thing about this whole thing is for me? My whole life i was attracted to women, i remember being a 9 year old and i stumbled across a porn site and got my first erection. I remember when i hit puberty i couldn't stop thinking about naked women, i would dream about them. Masterbate to pornography, check them out on the street. Then at 18 after 1 year of dealing with HOCD i got POCD and because of all the worrying my sex drive is now gone. So i feel nothing looking at naked women or pornography now. I feel like a shell of my former self. Was my attraction to women ever real? Did i imagine it all? How did i not notice that i supposedly liked kids before 18? ( When i got pocd ). I doubt my memories and i now doubt i ever was attracted to females. It makes the whole thing hurt more you know?

Thank you for answer.

Haha, Dayandnight, you just made me rethink my whole previous post. I completely relate to what you're saying, and if whatever it is we're going through can dull our once unquestioned sexual preferences so much, it can sure as hell amplify some others, and just generally throw everything out of whack. Maybe OCD is entirely to blame, penile responses and all. I'd like that, knowing that at the end of the day it was just simple OCD all along.

I have an appointment with a psychiatrist next week, I'll let you know how that goes. I'm sure we'll find a way out of this bud. One thing that really helps me is just distracting myself for a few hours... it feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and during that time I don't have to ponder right from wrong, "monster" or man (although again, logically I know real pedophiles aren't monsters at all), good or bad, life or death, to be or to not... distraction is bliss when it comes to my worries. It's becoming harder and harder to distract myself from the thoughts though...

Anyway, hang in there friend... and have a good night.

Sure dude, I'd love it if you tell me how your meating with the therapist goes.

And about the penile responses, i'd like to think of it this way. When i thought i was gay (HOCD) i used to get full blown erections looking at gay porn and thinking about having sex with men. Today those thoughts no longer arouse me. Instead i now sometimes feel aroused by thinking about sex with teens (12,13,14 usually). But when i began forcing these thoughts in the beginning i felt disgusted by them but over time i got desensitized.

Where was i... Right, my point is the chances of me having gone through 3 different sexualities in my 19 years of life is next to impossible. So the thoughts arouse you because they are sexual in nature. The primitive part of your brain does not give a damn who you are thinking about as this wikipedia page about sexual obsessions states.

'' The OCD sufferer may have a constant focus on not becoming aroused or checking that they do not become aroused, and this may lead to 'groinal response'. Many OCD sufferers take this groinal response as actual arousal, when in reality it is not. OCD sexual obsessions often result in guilt, shame, depression and may interfere with social functioning or work. Approximately 40% of sufferers (number could be higher due to the embarrassment associated) also report some accompanying physiological arousal. Reactions can include increased heart rate, a feeling of being turned on, and even erections, increased lubrication (in women), and orgasm. This response typically generates more confusion and uncertainty. However, this is a conditioned physiological response in the primitive thalamus of a brain which does not identify the thought as sex with a particular person, just sex. This is generally not indicative of one's own personal desires. (Osgood-Hynes) ''

So dont sweat it! ( Kind of ironic coming from me )

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I really don't know. Right now I am going through a terrible time with POCD right now, with specific thoughts about hebephilia (barely pubescent girls). Whenever I think about little girls or late teens, I don't get much of a response. But when I say the numbers 12-14 in my head, it gets weird. I had a gf who look very young even though she was older (I was 20, she was 22) than me. It was a bad and stressful relationship and at one point when I was joking about her shoe size and how small she was she jokingly accessed me of being a pedophile. The stress and the added obsession tipped me over the edge and I have been dealing with it for the past year and a half, close to 2 years.

I tried Tryingtoconcludes thought experiment, if there were no laws, no moral hiccups, no nothing, what would I choose. I can't decide, I don't know, and I feel like my current mind to telling me to go for the teen.

I read a fake story when I was younger (16 or 17) about a sexual relationship between a guy and his 12 year old sister. It enthralled me to such an extent that I actually tried to look for it again at some point, but couldn't find it. I wonder if this has influenced me

What really ###$ with me is that when I was younger I was all about older women. During my college career all of my crushed have been girls who are my age or older. But now I don't know, and its only made worse by my constant porn addiction (which is age appropriate, although some hentai I have watched crosses some lines) and my lack of libido. I recently saw a meme of what looked like a young teenage in Kiss with santa claus doing the rock on sign. My first observation was "she has a pretty face."

I have also realized that I have had stray thoughts in the past about my friends' little sisters. I never pursued them or really had any desires, but when their age was brought up sometimes my mind would think "how long until legal."

I truly don't know anymore, I don't know if I am so desperate for a relationship (I don't really have luck with them, and I'm a hermit because I am anxious, not because I don't like people) that my mind is looking for any sexually mature mate? I don't know, and it scares me. Some of my friends who I have admitted this to say I'm not, but one of them may think I am. Others have still been ambivalent or I am too anxious to properly think straight and I can't be comfortable around them anymore. It sucks and I can't take it. I want to get amnesia to before I met the bitch that started this (though I know I can't blame others) and I just want this to be over. I once had a fantasy about being a father of a daughter in a purely parental way. Now, I think its just my morality and sexual proclivity in a clash.

I don't want to be this way. I genuinely think I have a paraphilia, not POCD.

I am so sorry you asked a question for your own reassurance and instead I have confessed to my insecurities. I hope you become well.

Somebody in the paraphilia boards gave me some good insight... it made me realize that deep down, we do know if we're pedophiles or not. Straight up, if given the opportunity without any legal or moral trouble for any party, would you sooner sleep with a child or an adult of your choosing?

Thank you! I would sleep with any age-appropriate person over a child. I feel calm now.