Ugh POCD

*mod edit*

i got POCD and today I was looking on Tumblr and I saw a gif with a girl that was dancing in it, and I remembered an event where I saw the same gif once before and I don't fully remember but I think when I first saw it I thought the girl was kinda attractive but then I realized that I didn't know how old she was so she could have been a minor, and then I became pretty sure that she probably was. And I remember feeling pretty anxious and messed up about it because I didn't want to be attracted to minors. So when I saw the gif I got nervous I was gonna be attracted to it and I got groinal responses but the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that I wasn't because nothing about kids is very attractive. But the fact that I may have thought that she was attractive at first is gross. I read somewhere that " non-pedophile adults may not know someone is a minor and be attracted to them but then when they learn they are a minor will lose all attraction. A pedophile will only become more interested" or something like that but it's like, maybe I should have realized that she was probably a teenager immediately? I feel really gross.

lsll wrote: I read somewhere that " non-pedophile adults may not know someone is a minor and be attracted to them but then when they learn they are a minor will lose all attraction.

What?


What if they set the legal age to 21? 25? 30? does that magically make a girl unattractive?

No....

Whoever wrote that isn't thinking.

I'd argue, what happens is 'oh, they're young, oh well, move on'

IDK, it makes sense to me. Someone being a minor is inherently not attractive to a non-pedophillic adult, so it would make attraction fade and you'd just lose interest. So I interpret it as kinda saying that you may find someone attractive initially because you think they look nice, but then if you find they're a minor you lose interest and as you say, move on. It's not to say they're no longer 'attractive', but to a non-pedophillic adult they're not gonna view their appearance in the same way anymore I think. Like you can think someone is pretty or nice to look at without thinking it in a romantic or sexual way. So in the most literal sense (pleasing to look at) you probably are still gonna think their appearance is not ugly/nice, but also the fact that they are a minor would probably repel any past sexual/romantic view you had and it's just gonna be something you observe in the same way you think a flower or a painting is pretty. If that makes sense. I think it does.

I'm just gonna be using this thread as a vent thread BTW really... Cause you can't really talk about POCD with anyone but a therapist and I don't have one at the moment :/

Anyway so today I was on Tumblr and saw a (CLEAN, totally normal) fanart piece of an adult character from a web animation I like, and I thought it was nice so I went on the person's blog to find more art like it. Nothing on the blog description indicated any NSFW art or anything so I kept scrolling. And then, BAM, NSFW art of the characters from the web animation. I specify that they are adults because it's not like the artist is a pedophile or anything. But it was weird because there was a post with two pieces, one was an old piece and one was new. They were both of a shirtless character who was, again, adult, and it was in a sexualized way. But the old one made the character look kinda young? I've seen this kind of in less experienced artists drawing human characters where even their adult characters look young-ish because they're not that great at anatomy or showing age in their characters, so it looks like that. And sure enough the second one looked like it was drawn by a more experienced artist so he definitely looked more like someone in his twenties. But it made me really anxious cause the first picture was of a sexualized character who looked kinda young, and it made me worry that I was gonna be attracted to it even though I wasn't cause all I felt was uncomfortable. I even went back to look at it a second time just to make sure I wasn't attracted to it, even though I know testing isn't a good idea. I wasn't, but it just made me nervous to see it. I don't want to look at it again but I'm still getting nervous that I was attracted to it and that I have to check that I wasn't again. I know I wasn't though. :/ I'm also not gonna check cause I really don't wanna see it again.

Also I'm still really nervous about the stuff in the original post because the more I think about it, the more obvious to me it seems that the girl in the gif was probably a minor, so I'm really upset at the idea that I could have been attracted to her even if I initially assumed she was around my age. But she's probably not, and as I've kinda described here, any attraction I had has kinda gone away.
I mean at least I remember it as initial attraction, but I don't remember it very well because there's been a couple times where I have remembered something as like proof that I was a pedophile at but then as the memories come back I realize that was just another time I was all nervous about being attracted to a minor but there was no actual attraction. :/ Like one time I was nervous I was a teenage pedophile and just don't remember it so I was trying to remember if I was attracted to young kids as a teenager and I remembered an incident where I was 'attracted' to these preteens supposedly as a 16 year old and I was like "OH MY GOD I WAS A PEDOPHILE' but then as I remembered more and more it actually happened when I was like 19 and it was me being nervous because there was young preteens nearby and worrying that I was gonna be attracted to them and then getting groinal responses because of the anxiety. There was no actual attraction (I think... hopefully... It's hard to tell when groinal responses happen all the time to stuff you don't like :/)

So I could be misremembering this but I don't know if I am. The other problem is my POCD likes to use my bad memory against me by saying I may not be remembering bad stuff that happened or stuff like that.

Mostly stuff like the incident I mentioned before where I'm worried about being attracted to minors and then getting nervous when they're in the same area as I am doesn't even really happen anymore because as I mentioned before, I'm a cashier. So the POCD anxiety was really high when I first got the job, but now seeing kids kinda doesn't make me as nervous anymore because it happens all the time. I'm not gonna say it's flawless cause the doubt is still there, but my POCD is finding different ways to torture me. Now it's saying that my attraction to ADULTS is pedophillic somehow. So when I'm attracted to a person and they look like an adult and the context suggests they're an adult too but I don't know them 100% so I don't know how old they are exactly, I get nervous that they're actually 17 or something. Even 18 would be gross to me. I worry that I shouldn't be attracted to someone who is 20 because they are one year younger than me and can't drink but I can. I get worried that adults I am attracted to look like kids, even though like.... No kid looks like the adults I am attracted to, like ever. I get worried that I'm predatory for finding myself physically attractive in some ways because people think I look younger than I am, even though I don't think that. I think I probably don't like 21, but I do look like 19 or so and I think people overestimate how old 21 looks in the first place.
So now it's attacking the stuff I am actually attracted to, but somehow I think this means the POCD is getting better because it's not trying to convince me I am attracted to actual minors so much anymore. I am definitely not having fun either way though.