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Am I a paedophile


Leslieacost

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Well, this is distressing...
I know as a certain fact that I am sexually attracted to adult males. I always have been, quite strongly. (I am biologically a male) 

I never had second thoughts, only when I was trying to convince myself that I was straight. 

I am 20 years old.

I never felt any attraction for children, or even worried about that kind of thing, but one day, randomly, I became aroused near a child, I don't know if it was BY the child though... But that was deeply distressing, and I found myself feeling nauseous later on.

I have never looked at cp, nor do I ever intend to

for months, these thoughts never came to mind and I continued on fully attracted to adult males (as I always am) but one night, I was watching To Catch a Predator and I guess it triggered the thoughts again, and the sexual image of a child popped into my head and I became aroused, which I soon became repulsed by.

If this continues, I may commit suicide to be honest. Obviously, I would NEVER touch a child in that manner, but I cannot live with such repulsing thoughts,

I was also considering the possibility that since it is such a taboo and different thought, that that's why it was arousing, and not the child itself.

Keep in mind that I maintain strong sexual arousal for adult males, which are of my primary, majority interest. In fact, in the past, just for the certainty, before this whole worry about paedophilia, I tried to have a paedophilic thought and it was revolting and unpleasing to me.

I was diagnosed with OCD at age 11

 

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I can see why this is really upsetting you. I am no expert, so I can't say a lot, but so far you've had just a couple of random thoughts with confused origins, which you have rejected completely. So try not to punish yourself too much.

 

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Hello, L., welcome! :) 

I'm sorry this is troubling you so much :( . As far as I know (I'm a woman, but my husband "informed me about certain things" ;) ...), men sometimes become aroused in very "weird / random" moments - most importantly (in the context of your worry); it doesn't have to be related to the person they are looking at. When I read your post, I imagine this is what happened to you and you automatically (as it seemed logical) attributed what happened to the fact of seeing a child and you became scared by the idea of pedophilia, although there has never been a plausible reason for such worries. It also seems important that you've been diagnosed with OCD because this suggests that you're prone to obsessive thoughts, so while the same probably happened to many other men and they were able to ignore or "forget" it, you payed too much attention to it and were overwhelmed by emotions and associations, difficult to get rid of. I hope that rationally you know that pedophilia is something different from what you've experienced, but emotionally it seems difficult to become sure of. I would see it more generally as an obsessive fear that "you're something you would never want to be, you're something that deserves to be rather killed, ..." (some people have similar fears about, for instance, being able to harm or kill somebody they love and they are similarly scared and horrified); in your case, it manifests in the form of fear of being a pedophile, just because of a few random events that happened to you. 

What do you think?

Take care!

 

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I suffer from a very similar situation. I keep remembering terrible things that I've done. No. I've not hurt anyone. But still. My situation is different from yours, but mentally, we're going through the same thing. I can assure you however, that you are NOT a pedophile. How? Simply because of the way you think. I wish I could tell myself the same thing. Anyway. I suggest you take up Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with your therapist. That's what I'm doing currently. And don't skip your medication. Get your right dosage prescribed and take them regularly. Take care of yourself.

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