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That's not even.. what's going on (re the last tweet). People with ocd aren't contemplating sexually abusing kids, they're afraid they might sexually harm a child by mistake, or be a pedophile without realising, or any number of similar anxieties, but the point is that it becomes an anxious fixation because the person finds it so repellant. It's such an incredibly common ocd symptom, but most people are understandably terrified to talk about it

I remember reading a study where a therapist was helping people with similar anxieties - though not involving children - work through them. One client said she was afraid she was going to murder the therapist, not that she wanted to but that she'd somehow lose control of herself or an accident would happen. The solution? The therapist brought a kitchen knife to an appointment (with the patients consent), handed it to her and basically said "okay, what now?" Turns out nothing now, nothing happened, and it helped the client deal with the phobia

Obviously that approach isn't workable with something like pedophilia/csa anxiety but I think it highlights the true nature of what the anxiety actually is. It's irrational anxiety that comes from a deep fear and disgust of csa, not a desire to perpetrate it

xxlovelynovaxx-deactivated20241

Except it's not just "afraid of sexually harming a child by mistake" or of "being a pedophile without realizing".

I have intrusive thoughts about purposefully actually harming children in this way.

I've gotten termed before just for talking about my own CSA, so there's every chance talking about this will get my blog deleted, but this is important, so.

Yes, intrusive thoughts can be about "contemplating abusing kids". They can be thinking "what if I touched this kid I know on purpose while changing their diaper". They can be "what if I stuck [body part] inside this kids' [body part]. That's what makes them so disturbing.

They send you into an anxiety/shame spiral because of course if you have any human decency whatsoever, you don't WANT to do that. You don't understand how your brain could be so evil as to even think such a thing! You think you must be a monster to have that thought who is a danger to every kid you know and must constantly suppress your horribleness to even be a remotely safe person.

Why is this any different than having violent intrusive thoughts? We recognize that someone can have thoughts of LITERALLY PURPOSEFULLY MURDERING someone, and even feel like they are actual urges they're worried they'll follow through on. OCD can make you worry your limbs will act on the urges almost outside of your control, that your brain will force you into doing the thing because you thought of it, even though that's not at all true.

But as soon as it's thoughts of literally purposefully sexually assaulting someone, especially a child, suddenly that doesn't happen and people with OCD only ever worry about accidentally doing so, or that they might be attracted to children without realizing it, or any other number of lesser more "moral" and "excusable" intrusive thoughts.

I've been lucky enough to have seen genuinely good, non-abusive therapists, who helped me realize that thoughts are not actions, that there's no point in being ashamed of mere thoughts (no matter how horrible or disturbing the subject matter), that I am fully in control of my actions, and that I am not a bad person for the fact that these thoughts I have no control over appear in my head sometimes.

What makes intrusive thoughts both so hellish and so EFFECTIVE at sending you into an OCD spiral is that they are the worst thing your brain can think of. This doesn't always mean "something objectively horrible", especially when trauma is present (see: my previous posts on how anything can be an intrusive thought) but it does mean whatever your brain knows will send you into a panic over the "what ifs" of if you did do it.

The thoughts of purposefully sexually abusing a child do become an anxious fixation because they are beyond repugnant to the person who thinks of them. It's not something that you want to do, but it's something you're worried you'll do anyway because it would be horrible to do so.

And as someone who also has had intrusive thoughts about violently killing my loved ones, no, I didn't worry I'd do it "accidentally", I worried that I'd do that on purpose despite not wanting to.

We don't need to soften or sugarcoat it. Some people with POCD absolutely DO worry about purposely sexually abusing kids. Idk whether "contemplating" means "considering acting on those urges" or "thinking about what would happen if you did act on those urges despite actively not wanting to" (because the second is just what an intrusive thought spiral IS), but it's not all worries that we might "whoopsie accidentally did something that can be considered sexual abuse of a kid and harmed them without meaning too" or "oh no! I might in fact secretly even to myself be attracted to kids".

Please excuse my passive aggressive tone there. I know that worrying about accidental abuse or unknown attraction can in fact be elements of POCD, and don't want to diminish that. But reducing it to JUST that just further compounds the stigma against the majority of us who DO have intrusive thoughts about purposeful harm. And for what? To make us more palatable to people who already think we're monsters for being deeply distressed over the thought of hurting a child ever entering our heads?

I trust that that was not the above poster's intention, but that is still its impact. If we're going to fight the stigma against OCD and POCD in particular, we CAN'T shy away from, ignore, or erase the truly hated and stigmatized parts.

Maybe you have POCD and don't experience this, or the people with POCD you've spoken too haven't shared these particular thoughts with you. Why would we? Even intrusive thoughts of accidental harm get us labeled child predators, despite our fear of harming children making us about as far from that category as it is possible to get.

But the idea that intrusive thoughts can't be/aren't about the idea of purposely sexually harming someone is just untrue. Maybe you were simply trying to point out that it's not something that people with POCD actually want to do, in which case it's still important to acknowledge that you can be worried about purposely doing something harmful without wanting to do it, and reducing it to that was simply a poor way of making that point.

(I'd also say that it doesn't matter whether or not someone wants to do something bad if they don't do it, though. I WANT to physically hurt the doctors that medically neglected and abused me, but that neither makes me violent nor dangerous because I'm never going to. I wrote a whole post on @disabledunitypunk about how for those who have intrusive thoughts around stuff that they feel they DO want to do, it doesn't make them wrong or bad and you can still be massively disturbed - in some cases more so - by something you WANT to do that you never act on.)

So yes, this doesn't come from a desire to perpetrate it. But it CAN be disturbing THOUGHTS about purposefully doing so. I suspect mine even come from my own experience as a victim, being worried I'll become the monster that hurt ME. but regardless...

That's just what OCD is.

xxlovelynovaxx-deactivated20241

Also just adding to say that if I misunderstood what you were saying, I apologize.

I think it's important to make it exceedingly clear that yes, it can be intrusive thoughts about "losing control" or even "acting on this just because I thought about it even though I don't want to", because I've been so demonized and treated as a monster for having those thoughts in the first place.

It seems the point was simply to make it clear that intrusive thoughts ≠ desire, and while desire also ≠ action, that is very much true most of the time and still I think an important statement to make. I respect the point being made there, and may have misinterpreted the part about examples of pw/POCD being afraid of accidental harm or being a pedophile without knowing. I hope you'll give me grace as someone with POCD for adding that it's not just that, and for saying that the seeming implication that it is can be counterproductive to fighting stigma if it was intended.

I'm definitely not perfect and I know I can come off combative, but I also know you mean well and don't want to be a dick about it.

xxlovelynovaxx-deactivated20241

Reblogging my addition since this post is circulating again, and also adding:

I saw someone say in the tags that "if the thought isn't about the most fucked up and intrusive things, it isn't intrusive".

NO!

What makes a thought intrusive is ENTIRELY the distress it causes.

People can have intrusive thoughts over things that seem entirely innocuous. Moral OCD can run the gamut from "what if I sexually assault someone" to "what if I have consensual vanilla sex before marriage" to "what if I think another adult is sexy", and that's just in the realm of sexual thoughts alone!

I have intrusive thoughts about losing or purposefully leaving my favorite dolls somewhere. I fixate on them and spiral in the same way I do the ones about extremely severe harm! For me, it's a unique intersection of my autism causing me to personify objects, my POSIC identity (which is partially from autism and partially from schizophrenia and partially just is), and my OCD.

Going to the other extreme and saying "intrusive thoughts have to be stuff that 'normal' people universally revile" just isn't true. The examples I gave of sexual intrusive thoughts are often a result of moral OCD with a religious upbringing which teaches you premarital sex and even lust are horrible sins. Trauma from abuse can cause you to have intrusive thoughts over something as small as purposefully spilling some water, because every time you accidentally did as a kid your abuser acted like you were a horrible monster over doing it on purpose and so you spiral every time you think about it because you had that so deeply hammered into your head.

It doesn't help to fight ableism to say that intrusive thoughts are ONLY the ones that are "fucked up" or even that "make sense" to be distressed by. All thoughts that are distressing in a way that causes you to fixate on them and spiral are intrusive, no matter the actual subject matter of the thought.

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Artist: Munrou

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Even without words, we communicate through our eyes.

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No new years day will be like waking up to hollyweed on January 1, 2017

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We will never experience this again.

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that shit feels like it happened in 2012 and last month at the same time

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As a late diagnosed autist I will say one of the most damaging but transformative experiences I've ever had was being misdiagnosed with BPD.

Everyday my heart goes out to people with BPD.

The amount of stigma and silencing they face is astonishing and sickening.

I took DBT for years. Therapists use to turn me away because of my diagnosis.

I would be having full blown autistic meltdowns, crying for help literally - but because I was labeled as BPD ANY time I cried I was treated as manipulative and unstable.

As if the only reason I could be crying was if I was out to trick someone.

95% of the books out there with Borderline in the title are named shit like 'How to get away from a person with Borderline', 'How to stop walking on eggshells (with a person who has BPD)'

I was never allowed to feel true pain or panic or need.

That was 'attention seeking behavior', not me asking for help when a disability was literally inhibiting my ability to process emotions.

There were dozens of times where I had a full meltdown and was either threatened with institutionalization or told I was doing it for attention.

My failing relationships weren't due to a communication issue, or the inability to read social cues. No, because I was labeled borderline, my unstable relationships were my fault. Me beggong nuerotypicals to just be honest and blunt with what they meant was me pestering them for validation.

Borderline patients can't win.

And the funny thing is - I asked my therapist about autism. I told her I thought I was on the spectrum.

BPD is WILDLY misdiagnosed with those with autism and I had many clear signs.

Instead - she told me 'If you were autistic we wouldn't be able to have this conversation'. She made me go through a list of autistic traits made clearly for children, citing how I didn't fit each one.

And then she told me that me identifying with the autism community was the BPD making me search for identity to be accepted - and that I wasn't autistic, just desperate to fit in somewhere.

I didn't get diagnosed for another ten years. For ten years I avoided the autism community - feeling as if I were just a broken person who wanted to steal from people who 'really needed it'.

Because of my providers - I began to doubt my identity MORE, not less.

Ten years of thinking I was borderline and being emotionally neglected and demonized by a system meant to help me.

To this day, I still don't trust neurotypicals. Not fully.

I know I'm not borderline now - but my heart aches for them. Not for the usual stuff. But for the stigma. And the asshole doctors. And the dismissiveness and threatening and the idea of institutionalization hanging over their head.

I love Borderline people. I always will. I'm not Borderline but if you are I love you and I'm sorry.

You're not a bad person. You're not a therapists worst nightmare, you are a human with valid feelings and fears.

Borderline people I'm sorry.

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