pocd, or maybe not? i cant find any situations similar to mi

i posted here recently but my ocd is really messing with me. i know i have ocd. i just don’t know if i have pocd or i just have ocd about actually having real tendencies or something? it’s really distressing me

to explain this i’ll start off by saying that i started watching porn when i was 9 or 10. throughout my teenage years i watched so much gross or weird stuff. i think i got off on how taboo it was because some of the stuff i watched i wouldn’t do in real life.

one thing that always persisted is that i got off on the idea that people were getting off to things they shouldn’t be. so this escalated to various stuff, like really anything you can imagine. i would fantasize that a guy was getting off on the stuff i was looking at. the issue is that i had and still get turned on by fantasies of men with young girls. i was on youtube one day watching predators get busted on apps because people were pretending to be underage, and the stuff the guy was saying to someone he thought was underage turned me on. i’ve even wanted to go pretend to be underage and find older men online but i never did.

i guess i’m worrying if this is bleeding over into real life and if i actually view young girls in a sexualized way. i used to read loli stuff a lot and sometimes i still have. if i was just fantasizing of the guys with them i don’t think i would be freaking out as much, but i know i also got off to things where the girl was naive, she didn’t know what was going on but ended up enjoying it. like i enjoyed innocence being broken? and i also got off on things where they were by themselves and it’s like i liked the idea they were getting off because they weren’t supposed to. like if they were with tentacles, with someone else their age, etc. like sometimes it just focused on the girl. i’m not sure if this is some extension of me liking men with younger girls somehow? is that even what it sounds like? i’m worried about when i read stuff without guys and i got off on other things.

i’m mainly freaking out about this because there’s things i’ve done in real life that i remembered and it’s really freaking me out. when i was around 15 or so, my niece was on my back and i was just swinging her around. for some reason i became aware that her private area was on my back and i remember when i was swinging to one side i wondered if she felt anything because of the movement? and i’m worried if after i thought that i purposely swung more aggressively to see if she felt anything. i feel like i remember something like that but i can’t be sure. if i did though, i cant forgive myself because i would have basically acted upon something really gross and disturbing. i’m really scared that was my intent behind it. what if i really swung on purpose to make her feel something?

another instance with my niece. this one is recently and these were thoughts i were having when my ocd wasn’t flaring up. she’s going through puberty so things are growing. i remember there were multiple times i was curious what her chest looked like, like what they looked like at that age? i feel like i was curious because of all the stuff i was reading and i feel like it was in a sexualized manner. i remember really wanting to see. one time i was helping her with her hair in the bathtub and i was thinking that stuff again, i didn’t go out of my way to try to see i don’t think and i wouldn’t force her to do that cause that’s gross. she was turned around and i just remember looking down to see if i could see anything. if i’m not attracted to kids why would i be curious what her chest looked like? i’m being serious when i say i was really curious. whenever she was changing clothes it felt like i wanted to accidentally pop in to see if i saw anything. i might be exaggerating with that part but i just don’t know. i’m really scared and i feel like a really bad and gross person. i don’t know what any of this means.

i also just remembered when i was like 14 and in deep with all of these fantasies and stuff i imagined her with her dad like once. that’s so gross for me to type. i’m worried i molested her with the stuff i’ve mentioned and that i’m attracted to her. i know people are going to judge me for all of this and you have every right to, i feel gross. i don’t know what to think of anything. is it even possible that any of the scenarios i listed with my niece could be innocent and im overreacting? i don’t think so

I think watching gross and weird stuff online is unfortunately common for our generation. We are the first generation that had to deal with the internet in our teenage years. Look on this forum and you will find many people with similar experiences.

It doesn't sound like your niece was harmed in any way. Curiosity is normal for 15 year olds, and at that age we don't have our impulse control fully developed.

I am trying to make my piece with the fact that people may judge me. The truth is some people will. But we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world

All of this is reassurance, which won't actually help. I know from experience. I think a lot of us here have gone through cycles of posting on here and on reddit. It feels good momentarily, but the real problem is your brain.

Right now you are stuck on a cycle. You are ruminating, digging, and trying to "solve" something. This cycle will just keep repeating. The key is to break the attempts to "solve" it. I'm stealing something I saw in SadKnight's post, tell your brain "what happened, happened."

I'm sorry you are going through this, you can get past this!

thank you. it’s just that im scared of ever having acting out on desires or something. especially considering the stuff i’ve watched and the fantasies i had. it’s like im trying to connect the dots. like even if that thing did happen with my niece, i feel like it couldn’t have been an innocent curiosity thing. even if i had innocent or just curious intentions i feel like what i could’ve done is assault or molestation, if i purposely swung her around to make her feel something. and then my ocd connects it to me being a pedophile or corrupt person

OCD will make you conclude the worst possible conclusion about yourself. You can argue with it all day, but OCD isn't rational, and it won't let you win.

Everyone on this planet has done weird things they regret.

I have had similar fantasies and read similar things. I have accepted that it was a stage of life that I needed to get through to be who I am now. I can't know for sure what it means, or why I was drawn to the things that I was drawn to.

it’s just that im scared of ever having acting out on desires

I have experienced this too! A really scare truth that I had to make peace with was that I am capable of doing evil things. I can't be 100% sure that one day I won't do something evil, because I believe that everyone on this planet might do something evil in the right circumstances. The best we can do is be thankful that right now, in this point of time, we can do good.

OCD wants you to be 100% sure that nothing bad will every happen. But nothing is ever 100%, even if the odds of something bad happening are astronomical.

You need to let this go and stop torturing yourself.

If you spend all day looking for any evidence of something terrible in yourself you're going to find it. Everyone would. People have weird or disturbing fantasies and thoughts throughout their life, especially as a teenager. Just by how much these very small things have bothered you I'm confident that you're a good person who would never intentionally hurt anyone. You can't read too much into this.
I do think you should be intentional with the porn you watch though. These days it's very extreme and you can do down a lot of paths that are damaging. I don't think it's good for people to nurture this part of themselves, but rather think about what would be a healthy habit to nurture instead with the porn you watch instead.

catnaps wrote:You need to let this go and stop torturing yourself.

If you spend all day looking for any evidence of something terrible in yourself you're going to find it. Everyone would. People have weird or disturbing fantasies and thoughts throughout their life, especially as a teenager. Just by how much these very small things have bothered you I'm confident that you're a good person who would never intentionally hurt anyone. You can't read too much into this.
I do think you should be intentional with the porn you watch though. These days it's very extreme and you can do down a lot of paths that are damaging. I don't think it's good for people to nurture this part of themselves, but rather think about what would be a healthy habit to nurture instead with the porn you watch instead.

thank you so much. i just wanted to ask, do you really view the things i listed as very small things? i was kinda surprised when i read that because to me they seem like the worst thing in the world right now, especially if the thing i did to my niece is true. i do agree that i should lay off the more taboo porn and maybe porn in general because clearly its not helping me at all and it makes me freak out even more. this all started because of the type of porn and fantasies i was having. i was afraid it meant i was a pedophile, and what calmed me down was telling myself that even if i am, i would never act on it. then i started ruminating over if i ever actually acted on anything with my niece or other kids in my family which is why i started freaking out over this stuff.

kittsies wrote: do you really view the things i listed as very small things? i was kinda surprised when i read that because to me they seem like the worst thing in the world right now.

Yes, I really do think it's completely something to move on from. Even with your niece it was a passing or intrusive thought you had when you were a kid for a second that didn't amount to anything. It sounds to me like you suffer from intrusive thoughts, not that you're a pedophile. It's easy to tell you're a good person with a conscience. You should be kind to yourself and forgive yourself.

kittsies wrote:i do agree that i should lay off the more taboo porn and maybe porn in general because clearly its not helping me at all and it makes me freak out even more. this all started because of the type of porn and fantasies i was having.

Everyone has watched pretty extreme porn or gone down that path at some point. So you're not alone here. It's something there should be way more education on. I find in all things in life you have to be careful what you're taking in. If you're constantly taking in extreme porn, or depressing news, or scrolling through videos of people being terrible to one another, or reading incendiary tweets, etc. this stuff affects us in negative ways whether we admit it or not.

don't intrusive thoughts have to be distressing though, and not deliberate? when i imagined my niece with her dad back then, i'm pretty sure it was a fantasy i was having which makes me feel gross now. i'm not sure why i thought that but back then i watched a lot of porn and looking at taboo things made it easier for me to get off.

when my niece was on my back i don't really remember feeling grossed out or distressed by the thought. i think it was an actual curiosity thing but it distresses me if i acted on that curiosity and swung her around on purpose to make her feel anything and see if she had another reaction.

another thing that bothers me is that i consider myself bisexual (i'm a woman) and throughout my life i've noticed that in porn i'm only attracted to vaginas that have a small labia, is bald, etc. so basically what a prepubescents would look like. and when i looked at the drawn or animated loli stuff, i was attracted to how their genitals looked. i am into ageplay and i got into ddlg way too young when i was 13. when i was 14-15 i romanticized the lolita movie which was stupid of me. i hated turning 20 because i wanted to be 18/19 forever and i've gotten jealous of younger girls solely because of their age, which i know is stupid because i'm only 21. i'm obsessed with looking youthful forever and aging terrifies me. even if i'm somehow not a pedophile, i feel like i'm pretty close to it because i feel like i've sexualized and romanticized being young for so long that i conditioned myself to be turned on by this stuff. like i know i have ocd, i've been diagnosed with it, but it just feels like i have some genuine attraction on top of it. i'm not really sure.

Thinking that intrusive thoughts have to be unpleasant is going to get you stuck.

The other day I was driving over a bridge and thought about what it would be like to drive off. I wouldn't describe that intrusive thought as unpleasant. I was curious about what it would feel like, what would happen, how my family would react, but at no point did I have any intention to do it.

Intrusive thoughts are usually described as ego-dystonic, meaning against your core beliefs. For intrusive thoughts that don't trigger my OCD, I would describe them as feeling neutral. They just kind of exist in the back of my mind.

It seems like you have some stuff you need to work through regarding your sexuality, only because it is obviously causing you some distress. However, right now you are doing the OCD thing of using anything and everything as "proof."

Something I had to work on was getting comfortable feeling uncomfortable. The patterns of rumination are in response to discomfort. If you just allow the discomfort to exist, the ruminating will decrease. Basically, the problem isn't the guilt, shame, anxiety, or whatever other negative emotion you are feeling. The problem are the compulsions you are doing in response to those emotions, that's what keeps you stuck.

Compulsions lie. They tell you that you can figure it out if you think hard enough. You can't. Your brain won't let you accept whatever answer you come to, so what's the point of ruminating on it?

thanks to everyone who tried to help me. i really appreciate it but i realized i left out a lot of things in my original post that make me seem more innocent than i actually am. i think it’s a lot worse than i described and i’m just going to list why i think i have genuine attraction.


- when reading about child abuse stories, i am disturbed but turned on at the same time. i know this is disgusting. i don’t think it’s an extension of my fantasy of guys with younger girls because it could be a woman perpetrator too. i’m not sure if this has happened with stories of children doing stuff with each other but it might have happened, i’m not sure
- i have looked at legal porn where the girl looks really young and i am turned on by the size difference with the man. i feel like i’m attracted to the girl’s small body parts but only if she’s with a man? i’m not sure how to describe it. but i’m sure if i ever found videos where if there was a woman with the girl i would’ve gotten turned on too.
- this one is really disgusting and disturbing and i’ve felt sick over this for so long. when i was 15, i found these weird videos on youtube of young girls just stretching but it seems like men were uploading these videos? the videos were innocent, but i guess they were suggestive to the men uploading these videos because they were stretching pretty intensely and it was suggestive because the were making weird noises or making faces that could be interpreted as sexual i guess. well i got off to one of these videos a few times, i think i was imagining a guy getting off to the video and giving into his desire. but i feel like i was also getting off to the fact a young girl looked like she was doing something sexual
- it seems like my attraction to women is mirrored in my supposed attraction to kids. with regular porn, i can get off to women masturbating. with the animated or drawn stuff, i have gotten off to the young girl masturbating as well. and i think it turns me on more. i don’t know if it’s from the taboo of it or what
- this sounds extremely messed up but i was homeschooled so i’ve been on the internet for most of my life. i’m desensitized to a lot of things. i’ve never come across anything illegal but i know myself well enough that if i somehow came across something back then, such as actual abuse or something of a young girl doing things to herself that i could’ve gotten off to it. if it was just a girl by herself, i probably would’ve imagined a guy watching it and giving into his desire and that’s what would’ve gotten me off. but again, i feel like i would’ve also gotten off to the fact it was a young girl doing something sexual. i know this is a very big hypothetical considering it never happened but trust me when i say that teenage me wouldn’t have cared
- with the animated/drawn stuff i like it when there’s a bigger guy and even though i get off on that as well, a part of the reason i get off on it is because the girl is enjoying it when she’s not supposed to. but combined with the fact i am attracted to their genitals, it seems like it’s obvious there’s an attraction to kids

the thing is, if i was one i could accept it if i never acted on it. then i start obsessing over if i ever did anything inappropriate towards kids. i cannot figure out if i have and i think i’m creating some false memories but i just don’t know. another thing that bothers me is that i cannot for the life of me figure out if i was attracted to my “step niece”. i feel like i had some fantasies of her back then but i can’t pinpoint it so i don’t know if it happened or not? if i did have fantasies of her though there’s absolutely no doubt that i am one, and if i am one there were probably times i acted inappropriate which i just cannot live with. i know the whole point of ocd is that there will never be an answer but i need one. i really am extremely suicidal right now and i don’t know how much longer i can deal with this. telling myself i have POCD is a complete joke because it’s clear i actually am one. idk why i’m even posting this i just needed to tell everyone how messed up i actually am.