#278- Habitually Checking My Groin, and OCD Causing Self Harm Thoughts

Hello, Kevin, since I was 18, or excuse me, 17 years old, I've been struggling with various types of OCD.

The most recent one is POCD, so pedophile OCD, for those of y'all who are unaware.

They go on to say, one day I was scrolling at my Facebook, or scrolling through my Facebook homepage, and I saw a video of children.

For some reason, I decided to check if what I was seeing caused me arousal, and it kind of did, or so I thought, they go on to say.

After that, I got used to doing this with every girl I saw, checking to see if I got aroused.

Of course, the groinals got worse, and now I'm at a place where I don't know what's true or not anymore.

I honestly don't think that I could become a pedophile overnight, but the mere existence of this thought is killing me.

Also, lately the thoughts have been feeling like urges, or more definitive, you will do that thoughts.

Is this a normal process for POCD? So, Alex, thank you for sending this in.

I'm going to guarantee there are people somewhere in the world who are listening to this who appreciate that you sent this in because it's validating that they have had this experience because you have had this experience.

So, you know, the OCD can manifest for a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

It can start a lot of different ways.

But hearing people's stories about how it started to show up and the way it started to impact them, it can absolutely have this effect of kind of normalizing it.

And it can feel encouraging that there are other people out there so that you're not just feeling like you're the one person on earth who's been feeling this.

So...

What I love about your question is it really highlights how innocently compulsions can start and how simply and how quick they can start.

So, you know, you were talking about how you were going through Facebook and, you know, you saw, you know, a video of a child.

So this thought came up, I wonder if I'm aroused.

And you started to notice like, oh, well, you said, some reason I decided to check if I was aroused.

And you said, I kind of was.

So there are a lot of things to say to that.

I'll say a couple of things to that.

One, I think some of this could be, some of this, if you have questions, I'm gonna say this to the next questioner as well.

If there are these questions and struggles that you're kind of noticing, I think a lot of these can be unpacked with a therapist.

I hope you are working with a therapist.