Need to find a way to better deal with vivid, sex-related intrusive thoughts

[bobfish]

I hope everyone's been doing ok over the past few months. It's been a while since I last posted, and things have changed quite a bit, but I've still been struggling with mainly POCD and other sex-related fears. I think everything has been exacerbated by the lockdown, since I've been finding myself feeling increasingly sexually frustrated, which seems to have made my intrusive thoughts stronger and harder to manage.

The biggest problem that I have right now is that I'm not responding well to sudden intrusive thoughts, especially when they're vivid and about things that I really hate to think about. One example would be that I sometimes suddenly start to imagine a child having sex or masturbating. Now, in some ways my state of mind has improved and I no longer truly believe that I am a paedophile, so at least that layer has been removed. But I find it extremely difficult to deal with these mental images - it never fails to shock me just how vivid and horrible these mental images are, despite the fact that they seem to come solely from my subconscious. I don't know exactly what triggers them, I don't understand why I sometimes get them completely out of the blue, and it just feels like nothing that I try to do is particularly effective. I know you're meant to let these thoughts pass without engaging with them, but how on Earth am I meant to just ignore what basically amounts to child porn in my head?

There's another specific example that I've been experiencing recently which has upset me so much that I've found it incredibly difficult to do anything over the past few days. Recently I've been playing an absolutely fantastic video game, which has now become my favourite game of all time, and I found myself feeling genuinely attached to the characters in a way that felt really pleasant and heartwarming. Because the game is set in a fantasy world, for many weeks I was able to use this game as an escape from the real world (perhaps a bit too much...) and engage with the ways it made me feel without my OCD being an intrusion. But then OCD thoughts started to slowly creep in until a few days ago, while my 'guard' was 'down' for a moment, I suddenly had a really disgusting, sickening and astonishingly vivid thought about having sex with one of the child characters in the game. To make things worse, this character also happened to be my favourite in the entire game...! No matter what I try, I can't seem to move on from that awful moment, and that mental image keeps coming back over and over again.

All this has left me feeling exhausted and defeated, but also angry. OCD has tried to take everything away from me: it almost destroyed me back when I had contamination fears, it almost forced me to quit my job working with children, and now it's ruined a video game that brought me genuine happiness and joy during a bleak few months. Right now I'm too scared to feel happy about anything else, because I don't want my OCD to take that away as well. But I do want to keep fighting, even if it's really hard right now, because I can't carry on living like this.

Thoughts on how I can feel better?

[PolarBear]

Ah, child porn in your head. Mine started when I was about 15 and kept going for oh, about 35 years. I know it well. Picturing naked kids, "seeing" young teens sexually excited, thoughts, images, mind videos of sex with kids. 

I say the above only to show that you are not alone and that your problem is not unique.

Today I seldom get such thoughts. When I do, I brush them off like a fly on my arm.

As for advice, I'm afraid all the same old, boring advice you've received before is basically it. There is no altered treatment to deal with your type of obsessions. There is no specific treatment for child porn in your head. The treatment for you is exactly the same as someone who spends three hours scrubbing in the shower.

I know that may seem depressing to you, but it's good news. It means basically all the advice to everyone else on all the other threads is applicable to you.

One thing I will mention is that a great problem you have,  like countless others, is that you choose to take the thoughts seriously and act on them. You perceive the thoughts as threatening. You can and must choose differently and change your perception.

[bobfish]

Thanks, PolarBear. I really appreciate it - sometimes you forget that you're not the only one with these thoughts...

The intrusive thoughts that I've been getting over the past week really suck, and it's been really draining. I know that engaging in these thoughts is something that I can control, but often it feels incredibly easy to slip into acting on them and rumination - it is a conscious decision, but it feels like it's only just a conscious decision, and so it takes considerable mental effort to make sure I don't engage and focus on something else. Mindfulness has worked somewhat but often my brain gets 'bored' of focusing on the present moment. When I'm doing something that requires high physical/mental effort, like exercise, my job or academic work, it's a lot easier to let these thoughts pass, but (for example) at night they can wreak havoc and cause me to lose sleep.

I'm trying my best, and I'm beginning to feel better than I did when I wrote that first post. I know there are definitely some things that I'm doing wrong, but I hope I have the right idea.

Edited July 15, 2020 by bobfish