Hey everyone! I've spoken to a lot of you over the last few months especially after becoming a moderator. Thank you for the kind words and for trusting me with your stories. I think talking about your personal experiences is super important because it makes people feel less alone, so this is a write-up of my story, from the beginning to now. Spoiler: I don't have POCD anymore!

MY EXPERIENCE WITH POCD

[age 8-9] There's a saying in psychology, genetics load the gun and environment pulls the trigger. There's a history of mental illness and alcoholism in my family, and my parents have never spent much time protecting me, especially when it comes to the Internet. The first time I saw porn I was 8. Porn totally warped my brain's perception of love and confused me a lot. The inciting event for my POCD happened when I was 9. Another kid who was much younger than me did something unintentionally inappropriate in front of me, and because I had been watching porn for a year at that point, I froze up. (I won't go into more detail, but all clothes stayed on, and today I can see that it wasn't a big deal. OCD has a habit of blowing things out of proportion.) I spent the next seven years obsessing pretty much all day every day over the fact that I didn't stop that kid from doing the unintentionally inappropriate thing in front of me.

[age 9-16, trigger warning suicide and self harm mention, no details] I would think about how I didn't stop the kid all the time. I didn't know the word pedophile at the beginning of my POCD. When I learned it I would google information about pedophilia and watch documentaries on Netflix and YouTube about pedophiles. I would watch Chris Hansen's "To Catch a Predator." I think I watched those things because I became addicted to self-punishing. I thought I was completely worthless. I thought about ending my life. I self-harmed. I thought I didn't deserve any happiness whatsoever. In retrospect, I would never hold a 9-year-old accountable for freezing up, especially not a 9-year-old with parents as unhelpful and uncaring as mine. I had nobody to go to for guidance, so I suffered in silence, my agony increasing over time. I started being cruel to my youngest sibling to get away from her, because her age triggered me and I couldn't handle the crushing shame and self-hatred the thoughts brought me. My intrusive thoughts were usually a quick flash of an image of either a kid doing something inappropriate or me hurting a kid, a sentence about how I must like or want to do [insert upsetting thing], or panic because I'd convinced myself I was a predator. I had other types of intrusive thoughts and obsessions about my parents dying, me hurting people, or hurting myself, but never as bad as POCD. I haven't seen this talked about much in r/POCD, but I'm also bisexual and figured this out pretty early, and the societal stigma of bisexual women as predators made my shame about POCD worse. This is why I can empathize so much with male sufferers of POCD, because society tells men they are dangerous (the shitty men ruin it for everyone). Society told me that because I was a girl who liked girls I must predatory. Nobody is inherently predatory, and if you're obsessed with the fear you might be a pedophile, you're probably even safer for kids to be around because you'll pick up on weird things going on with a kid quicker than someone who's never thought about it.

[age 15-onward] At age 15 I started seeing the first therapist I ever trusted. I'm 21 right now and I still see her. My therapist is the reason I was able to break free of POCD. I reached my breaking point at 16 after spending so much time miserable and couldn't hide my pain anymore. I told her through gasps and tears that I was going to tell her next week something I'd been upset about since I was 9. I think she thought it was going to be very dramatic, like a crime had been committed or something. When we met the next week and I slowly choked out through sobs what happened when I was 9 and the thoughts I had been having ever since, she laughed and said "is that it?!" I was convinced because of the pedophile-related media I'd seen that she was going to take me to jail, so her reaction wasn't invalidating to me, it was the best thing I'd ever heard in my life. None of the doctors I have are OCD specialists, all have several patients with POCD. We worked hard to combat my shame and self-hatred. We worked through understanding myself and forgiving myself, the active traumatization being caused by my parents, my relationship with my youngest sibling, and more. She still improves my life every week. I cannot understate how valuable therapy is if you can access and fully use it. I feel so sorrowful that some people have a hard time accessing therapy.

A lot of the research about OCD concludes that ERP, Exposure Response Prevention, is the most effective treatment for OCD, and that CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, in some cases can be harmful for OCD because we want to learn to consider thoughts neutral instead of examining them like CBT does. This was not my experience, and not every doctor says CBT is necessarily harmful, but I suggest you talk to a doctor about your circumstances. My therapist (like I mentioned before) is also not an OCD specialist. It's definitely better to get a specialist if you can find one, but therapists who aren't specialists can also help.

I took medication then and still do now. When I was 17, Lithium somehow permanently took away around 80% of my intrusive thoughts. I was only able to take it for about a year and a half before it caused stomach problems for me, but I still haven't regained that 80% of intrusive thoughts. Today I take Wellbutrin which helps me exactly as I need it to, and anxiety medication as-needed (both short acting, one stronger for panic attacks and one less strong for lesser anxiety). I know that some communities have a lot of stigma against medication which makes me sad because OCD is largely a problem with your brain chemicals/neurotransmitters, and medication helps with that directly and makes therapy easier/more effective too. I'll probably take medication my entire life and that doesn't bother me. I don't even think about it anymore, it's just part of my routine. I'd much rather take medicine than deal with POCD again. You wouldn't tell someone with a physical disability not to take meds, etc...

[self harm implied but not specifically mentioned] At this point in my life I don't have POCD. I don't really have intrusive thoughts, maybe once a month, but they don't upset me because I've worked on resilience and shame so much in therapy. A few months ago I had to help a teenage cousin who was having a mental health crisis. She wanted to shave while taking a shower but she wasn't trusted to have a razor alone. I was uncomfortable but able to stand nearby outside the curtain until I could take the razor and leave. I cried when I left the bathroom, not because I was upset, but because it was evidence that I was able to fully function and POCD officially didn't control me anymore. Years before I would have been utterly destroyed by having to be in the room while she showered, even though the curtain was closed the whole time. When this happened a few months ago, I was uncomfortable but fine. It took me about half the time I spent not getting help to get to where I am now. I wish I'd known what POCD was when I was at my worst, which is why I feel so passionately about investing my time in this community.

Thank you to anyone who's read any of this! I know I talked about some upsetting stuff, so please take care of yourself. Some favorite subreddits of mine for feeling calmer include r/eyebleach, r/cozy or r/cozyplaces. I hope that reading this made you feel less alone. Feel free to ask me anything (within reason) in the comments, and I'll reply when I see it! :)

(For anyone who wants to DM me, you can! My boundaries are 1. If it feels like you're asking me to talk you out of suicide/self harm, I won't reply because I am not trained for crisis intervention 2. If it feels like you're pressuring me to respond faster, I will stop replying because that's not cool 3. If it feels like you are talking to me instead of going to a therapist, I will tell you that I can't help you anymore because I don't want someone to not go to therapy because they feel like I can fill in that gap. A trained professional can significantly help you, I can only give thoughts based on my experiences.)