Don't know how to move on..

So I posted about this on the OCD forum, but here we go. When I was around 13 or 14 I found something called straight shota.. and I guess most people here knows what that is at this point.. I would imagine myself as the boy in all occasions. I would do this on and off until my early twenties.

One day I did just stop because I did realize it was normalizing child abuse and it was just a ###$ up and vile thing. it's weird cus I never considered how terrible it was in all those years. I think it was cus I was in the anime community and just saw so many adults and users older than me talking about it like it was okay and normal. I also always did have a thing for older women so that probably had something too do with it too. and when I stopped I was fine for a while until one day, when I woke up with all the memories of what I've done and now I just feel disgusted at myself. I feel like a monster and now I have POCD too. It's gotten better and now I'm looking for a therapist. But now I don't know how to deal with this guilt and shame.

I think you could gain healing from discussing it with a therapist It's good you realised that such imagery normalizes child abuse, but it is also important to remember that you were not looking at images of real children. Drawings are ultimately just drawings. You didn't hurt anyone so try to please be less harsh on yourself.

sprock wrote:I think you could gain healing from discussing it with a therapist It's good you realised that such imagery normalizes child abuse, but it is also important to remember that you were not looking at images of real children. Drawings are ultimately just drawings. You didn't hurt anyone so try to please be less harsh on yourself.

Thank you for saying that. Luckily I got a phone call from a therapist whose willing to help me and is also trained in dealing with POCD. it'll be hard and scary to explain to him everything but hopefully it'll go well. You are right that it is just drawings but it's still hard to deal with the fact that I got anykind of pleasure from them even if I was imagining myself as the child... I was able to find this site because I was google to see if anyone has dealt with this and if they're going thru the same thing as me and I found a few posts about it here.