Quote Originally Posted by wanderer02 View Post
I am just having a bad meltdown because of the checking I've done in the past looking at child modeling images and that I did something i can't reverse which is making the notion of confessing my "crime" very real. It's causing me to panic and I don't know where to go with myself. I keep looping in the fact that I've done more than just obsess which looking up images and that I can't reverse what I have done.. Can anyone offer some advice on dealing with such dead end situations? It makes me feel like my POCD made me do something that is beyond the scope of "just ocd" :(
If we look at what the medical professionals say in sexual obsessions in OCD there is evidence that sufferers rarely act on their thoughts (and lets remember OCD is a very common disorder, they suspect the more "Pure O" end may represent a higher % of sufferers in some studies but they are hard to capture due to the isolating nature of these thoughts) and that, in both men & women, these themes can involve feelings of sexual stimulation that can lead to masturbation in order to provide physical relief from unpleasant physical sensations.

We could argue sexual stimulation is going beyond "just OCD". We could argue masturbation is actually reacting to these thoughts and is going beyond "just OCD". But the medical professionals don't. They understand that a) sexual stimulation is a response and upstream of moral side hence it can happen inappropriately as well how increased focus on the genitals also increases blood flow to them which in turn increasing the likelihood of sexual arousal and b) when masturbating the person isn't doing it to engage with thoughts but to relief uncomfortable genital sensations and then will feel guilt, shame, despair, etc.

You may understand all this fine, another POCDer may be down a rabbit hole kicking themselves over all that. I've come across some for a start. It's only natural to view such things as wrong as it just wouldn't seem appropriate at all but the medical professionals are the ones we need to listen to on this. When do we ever hear about violent OCDers in the media or OCDer sexual predators? How could they cover that up on a global scale?

Our lives have their share of these dead ends. We can choose to see them for what they are and learn to accept we made mistakes, learn from them and make ourselves better people for them or we can choose to stay stuck in ruts and let them hold us back. You can't change it. The All-or-nothing thinking style we struggle with is part of the problem here as is Perfectionism.

So, examine your intentions. Don't try to compare yourself with the intentions of others where possible. You don't know if they were the same as yours unless they state them (e.g. another POCDer doing checking/testing compulsions) otherwise you may lump yourself in with a very broad spectrum of people and focus on the worst outcomes from the group. Don't consider yourself "the only one", something a lot on here do, because you don't know what the rest have done either. I'm betting you are far from the only one. Recognise that "confessing" is a compulsion because it comes when you feel bad like this. Therefore treating the anxiety to reduce or eliminate it takes that with it.

This takes me something you raised to me. You went through a tough time with all this, then it went away for a bit and now it's back with avengeance. It's back now because you have been triggered by a TV programme. Examine a similar example we may see in OCD:

Sufferer is worried about stage IV x cancer which goes on for a year. They chase doctors, have tests and possibly create a ton of threads on NMP in the process. Then they have a couple of months of respite, they drift away from NMP. Then they come back as bad, or worse, than before.

How illogical is that? If you thought you had some terminal form of cancer how likely is it you would come to terms with everything and not bother about it, not even being in treatment as such a real cancer patient would be, and go on with life as normal? Then it comes flooding back. What is the common denominator in all that? Anxiety.

Now expand on that example to add in the person went around cancer forums, an obvious no-no, talking to people actually going through all this and adding to their struggles with the type of reassurance-seeking behaviours and denial we may see on here (a reason why we say don't go to cancer boards). At the time the person may be so far in that rabbit hole they can't see what their behaviour is doing to others (many would, some wouldn't, it's a debatable topic) but most (hopefully all), when in a brief period of respite or once they get a grip on their anxiety, would look back and be horrified at that.

Whilst this is not quite the same as your example we can discuss how that would be a fail in morality and how do we move on from the thoughts we may have made a range of cancer sufferers feel worse? We can't change it. We could apologise, obviously. Some we could apologise to may sadly no longer be there. This presents an issue with obtaining closure which All-or-nothing thinking and Perfectionism are going to fight against. We have to learn to create our own closure the best we can.