don't know where else to turn,

I'm going to make this as short as possible. First, i'm suffering from ocd, ROCD, HOCD and harm ocd, wich i was admitted to the hospital for last year. It got better, but things got really bad again the last month. Thinking i was a liar, cheater, and one thought goes to into another. Thinking i was a cheater, and with what girl i was cheating with, (girl i kissed, while i liked another, but never got a relationship with) this got me very very anxious. Tho everybody told me that isn't cheating, that i just was a bit confused. So that calmed me down.

But then i thought, oh know, that girl was not 18 yet, and i was 25, am i a paedofile? but ofcourse i can't be, i'm not attracted to children, so thats ok. But then something popped into my mind that was burried for a long long time. When i was 17 (11 years ago) i woke up, having a wet dream about a 10 year old male child i was so upset by that, at least i think i was, it was something that never happend to me, always got off and always liked girls, my first fantasies as a teenager were girls, always bin attracted by them, And then a bit later i thought of it again, i can't remember if the thought scared me, or i was just aroased by it again. And then i masturbated, mixed thoughts, about that dream, and girls of my age. was i trying to push the thoughts away, at least again i think i wanted to push them or did i really wanted to get of on that dream. Its so messed up. Did i just see it as a fantasy like any other i had in that age. I could never harm a child, and am not attracted to childeren in any way. After that thing it didn't happen anymore, never got aroased by children again. Got in many normal relationships where i felt good in. But now i'm bound with fear and anxiety, affraid that i'm really will be a paedofile, cause i wasn't very anxious about it back then.

But when i was 24 i developed HOCD, suddenly i was attracted to adult males, where i never was before. Its like the fear and the anxiety creates the aroasal. I lost all attraction to girls, and was even more affraid. Wanting to test myself almost every day if i still was attracted to girls, by mixing adult male with female fantasies.

So the big question, am i a paedofile by having masturbated on those thoughts. I'm very close to throwing myself out of the window...

You certainly are not a paedophile or a homosexual. This is a typical OCD bastard thought. It is just designed to make you feel anxious and doubt yourself. Hopefully you are taking medication for this.

You understand those OCD thoughts are just misfiring biochemical events. They don't originate in the reason centre of your brain but when they come you tend to believe them because your thoughts usually come from the logic brain. So you are trying to reason with something that isn't coming from anything reasoned about you. It just doesn't make sense but you are left with the confusion, doubt and fear.

The idea is to accept the thoughts and not reason them but just attribute to OCD and dismiss without getting anxious. Don't do any checking at all. When you feel better study up a bit on paedophiles so you lose the anxiety and you place the label on someone else. When you are well you can even say to yourself then that you are a paedophile and just sort of laugh at the idea. The aim is to make the words sound like ridiculous.

margharris wrote:You certainly are not a paedophile or a homosexual. This is a typical OCD bastard thought. It is just designed to make you feel anxious and doubt yourself. Hopefully you are taking medication for this.

Even when at the time that event occured i wasn't very anxious? And as i almost can remember (not sure) i wanted to get off on it?

Hi Lorian,

Don't worry. You dont seem to be paedophile or anything similar. Its just your OCD messing up with your thinking. Try to distract away from such thoughts. Trying to reason your way out of those thoughts may be futile. Your OCD thoughts hold sway over you when you pay these thoughts with attention. So instead try out my favourite trick. Throughout your day, try to focus you attention on things in the outside world. By doing this, you are focussing your attention away from your inner world of thoughts. Make sure, you don't over do it. If you over do, you may tire out soon or you may get confused as to how to focus outside.

Hello there, lorian. Please don't worry, you sound fine. You're worrying about just the same sorts of things that many other people on this forum, including me, have worried about, and it's nothing but your ocd. When I was younger, (I'm in my 50s now), I worried that I was turned on by a whole range of people, when I wasn't really. But worrying about it was enough to make me feel that I was being turned on by it.

You can have a thought, or a dream, about a child or whatever, and make anxious assumptions that aren't actually true. I think that that is really typical of ocd - "Why did I feel/think/do that?" - and we all jump to the worst possible conclusions.

Believe me, the sort of stuff that's gone through my head - pretty much everything listed in the threads and links provided by marg - is way, way stranger than anything that you've thought or dreamt, but here I am now, thirty years older than you, and I can't believe how worried and upset I used to feel - and I'm not gay, not a paedophile, or any of the million and one things that I used to worry about.

People without ocd have these kind of thoughts, dreams etc., and dismiss them as a mixed up jumble of unconnected things that they've seen or heard during the day, but, having ocd, we pounce on this stuff, and make the worst (wrong) diagnosis of it.

Just tell yourself, (accurately), "So what? I dreamt that, I mistakenly labelled and treated it as sexy, but it's nothing but my ocd brain scrambling things up, so I think that I feel things that aren't true."

Really, you sound completely normal to me, with nothing to worry yourself about.