Am I bad person?

[dancerja77]

I was triggered by a post I saw on Facebook that involved people getting in trouble for watching porn that involved people under 18. I started panicking and tried to think back to when I was much younger and started getting into porn. I remember some videos had the word "teen" in them and I'm not sure how old all the girls were in the videos. Am I a criminal? I feel like I'm guilty now and I'm really worried about that. I dont think I purposely tried to do something bad, so I'm like worried now that I'm a bad person. Ugh I hate my stupid brain I wish I didn't work like this.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Something you need to remember is that teen porn is very common. It is also completely legal as long as those in the videos are legally allowed to be so (which varies by country, state, etc hence there will be disclaimers on the bottom to state this). You also need to remember that these producers try to make teens look more teen than adult hence they look for young looking people, use video editing software, etc.

To find illegal stuff means heading into "darkweb" territory really. That will take you a lot more than simply looking for porn sites since web searches will be throwing up traditional teen porn in searches.

It's a bit like the difference between searching for weapons, terrorism, drugs, etc. Any search engine will pull you reams of legal stuff on any of that but it's a whole different experience trying to "search out" the people involved in any of it.

Do you see what I mean?

Why did you come across that issue? Was it through searching or just random? Sexual themes are pretty common in OCD, and I know you've spoken out OCD themes a fair bit from my observation of your threads.

[dancerja77]

Someone posted an article about a man being arrested for it, and it made me
Feel guilty and feel like I've done something wrong intentionally. But I think you're right, it would take more research and intent to be a bad person. I wish I wasn't so guilty about everything. Every choice I make I feel like it's wrong and I feel bad about it.

[MyNameIsTerry]

OCD is a lot about trust & doubt. Hence why so many of us keep checking things to make sure they are "just right" or that we haven't done something wrong or misheard something.

Learning to spot when your thoughts are wandering into these areas that ultimately trigger your guilt can help. Learning my triggers and my Cognitive Distortions has been a greater help in my recovery process.

Self esteem gets hammered by mental health disorders. Anything you can do to improve your self confidence, self worth, fulfilment, etc all helps boost this.