hi. dylan back at it again with the long rambling rant posts about pocd.
like again i am not a psychologist, i am not a psychiatrist, i am simply a dog with a blog who has a debilitating anxiety disorder (because ocd is an anxiety disorder) with heavy focus on a subtype that has an alarmingly high body count and misdiagnosis rate, that i obsessively (lol) researched for YEARS and dismissed every time because people had mislead me about what ocd actually was, that i couldnt possibly have ocd because it didnt look like the stereotype of cleanliness and counting.
but i do take issue with the behaviour people will claim is "pocd" when really it is absolutely fucking not, because a person with pocd would be disgusted by these things.
people with pocd are not attracted to children. real or fictional. people with pocd do not consume csem, simulated or otherwise, to "cope." people with pocd do not defend these things. people with pocd do not produce these things. the entire fucking basis of pocd is repulsion and fear of being a pedophile, to the degree of it being debilitating. people with pocd do not get off to the sexualisation of children.
to be clear, there is a difference between groinal responses and arousal and attraction. your body and brain are not friends, your body will respond to a thought thats parsed as sexual in nature and you will check, compulsively, to see if it's arousal, to know if it's moral and correct or if actually your body's just somehow proven you a pedophile. it hasn't.
your brain has trained itself to hyper analyze every single thing you think about, do, or respond to in regards to children and csa/csem. pedophiles may pursue those fantasies, because it brings them gratification, even if they feel guilt about it.
you might feel guilty for intrusive thoughts, but for someone attracted to children those thoughts are not intrusive. for a pedophile perhaps being a pedophile is distressing, but the idea of children is not what distresses them, it arouses them.
the ENTIRE basis of pocd is repulsion, fear, anxiety, in response to pedophilia, in response to that fear that you might be a pedophile.
groinal responses are simply your body reacting because you're aware of it, you're checking. it's a compulsion. your organs dont know the specifics, they're just responding. your heart doesnt know for sure if its a gunshot or fireworks when it hears a bang, it just reacts to a noise. there is a difference between guilt regarding attraction and arousal, and repulsion.
to add to that, the purpose of most ocd treatment isnt necessarily to rid you entirely of intrusive thoughts but to minimize the often drastic responses you have to them, so youre less distressed. the point is to be able to dismiss a thought without fixating on it and checking checking checking. to make an intrusive thought just a thought you dont like, to move on from and not dwell on. to just go "thats fucked up, back to work"
"did i say something weird? did i stare at that kid too long? am i attracted to them? where are my eyes going? am i grooming someone by talking to a younger person in a perfectly normal context? does this thought that makes me uncomfortable mean im a pedophile or is my discomfort proof im not?
"maybe i should just stay inside, what if i hurt someone? i dont want to hurt someone. i could just hurt someone. i dont want to. im scared ill end up being this thing that haunts me. something that might have hurt me as a child, too. maybe i should just kill myself, i dont want to be a pedophile. im scared of it. the idea of being attracted to children disgusts me and scares me."
↑ these are all thoughts you might have. these may be almost never ending, torturous, and debilitating. this is the reality of pocd. not "actually i have pocd thats why i read lolicon hentai"
an intrusive thought is exactly that: intrusive.
misinformation on topics like these can get people killed. dont fucking get it twisted.
(csa stands for child sexual abuse, csem stands for child sexual exploitation material, simulated csem can range from written works to drawn, ai generated, animated, acted, depicting children in sexual contexts intended to be gratifying. just because a real child was not involved in the making of simulated csem, doesnt mean it wont or cant hurt real children. it can. it has. and it does.)
