I know all these things have probably been posted on these forums before but I had a question about behaviours that people with POCD have.
I have had a fear of molesting my younger siblings since I was maybe 11 years old. I also had fears of my siblings being molested by family members and would typically worry about them when I wasn't around to see if they were okay.
This fear has stuck with me to the age of 16, and now I'm starting to get really worried.
If I'm doing something like masturbating, I never go into it with the intention of thinking POCD thoughts. They always spring up during masturbation and (sometimes) I feel like there might be genuine arousal happening. I had a similar thing with animals back when I was younger but now I know I'm definitely not attracted to animals. I've seen my younger siblings naked before and I wasn't ever turned on, but images of naked kids hasn't been in any POCD intrusive thoughts recently either.
In a strange way it helps to be around my siblings when I get bad POCD spikes because I'm reminding myself that they are kids and I couldn't possibly be attracted to them.
I was wondering if any of these are symptoms of pedophilia, or what the symptoms of pedophilia might be? I know it doesn't help to keep giving these thoughts attention but I honestly don't know how to deal with them anymore, I've never told anyone about them and couldn't possibly fathom explaining it to anyone in real life.