POCD did I act out?

[Roger Smith]

Okay so I'm a long sufferer of pocd which developed when I was around 14 due to being horrified by a news story about a paedophile. It lasted a long time but eventually I found this forum and learnt not to give into the compulsions and at one point felt i I had escaped it forever. This was until the day I first met my newborn neice.

When I first met my niece they offered her for me to hold and I decided I should to challenge the ocd. I asked how to do it and they said to support her bum with my hand and her head with my shoulder. Due to where my hand was I felt really anxious and kept thinking about what if I moved or felt it and how people could do that and get away with it. After a while I got lost in a train of thought into how easy people could do this and I felt really anxious until I felt my hand move. Funnily enough when I first moved it I wasn't anxious I remember thinking it's okay don't turn that into an ocd so I didn't think I'd done anything wrong then.

Unfortunately as I kept thinking eventually the ocd got to me that it was too important not to be sure about and it started again. I moved my hand left and right to prove to myself that you can move your hand and not be anything sexual because of course I feel nothing towards a baby. I can't get this thought out of my head that moving my hand was wrong. I know it wasn't sexual because it's a baby and I didn't feel anxious straight afterwards so it must have been fine when I did it. I keep thinking why would my hand move because it wasn't to get move comfortable because of were she was. I keep thinking what if thinking about moving your hand made it move or because I was focusing on that part of her body. Can somebody tell me whether I did anything wrong so I can start to resist compulsions or whatever else is necessary. Thank you.

[Unsurechap]

I'm not going to offer you reassurance which is what you are seeking. It won't help you. Living with the uncertainty will help you.

your story sounds like classic OCD to me. 

[Caramoole]

Read your last paragraph again, look at it as though it was a post by another person and consider how you'd answer them.  All the clues are there......Why you thought this way, the compulsions that followed then and the ones you've done subsequently.  See if you can spot them and work out what you think you need to do

[PolarBear]

Hi Roger and welcome to the forum.

You're looking for reassurance right now. You're filled with dread and doubt and you want your anxiety to be over so you think if you came here, asked the questions you did, you could get an answer and that would make your anxiety go away. It won't. Reassurance seeking is a compulsion and it never works out the way you think it will. Oh, you might feel better for a few minutes, but soon enough the dread and doubt will be back and you'll want to ask for more reassurance.

Now I can tell you that my pedophile thoughts started at 15 and they haunted me for the next 35 years. I couldn't even begin to count how many times I touched a child and immediately wondered if it was inappropriate, if it was sexual, if I meant it to be something it wasn't at the time. I would drive myself crazy thinking about it, ruminating over it, going over it in my head again and again, analyzing it, trying to figure it all out. It was all compulsions and it never brought me any relief.

The way forward for you is to realize OCD can do exactly what you're going through right now. There's nothing unusual about it. It's standard OCD fare. Realizing that, you can then work on slowing down and stopping your compulsions. Don't feed the OCD monster with compulsions. Leave the matter alone. Refuse to get into mind debates over it.

[Roger Smith]

Thank you, as long as I know I haven't done anything wrong to the baby then I'll be able to resist thinking about it.