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This scares the life out of me...please helpl


Auptraum123

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Hello,

I am new to this forum. I am very grateful for the existence of such a forum, dedicated to helping those suffering from psychologic ailments.

So thus, I have come to this forum for help, and also to help others.

For starters, I am a 20 year old male. And, approximately half of a year ago, I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder, a disorder consisting of a combination of symptoms from the two disorders of Schizophrenia and Bipolar. I do not quite experience the manic aspect of the Bipolar, but it mostly comes in the form of relapsing continual depressive periods instead.

Anyways, I will explain one of my current mail dilemmas.

Recently, my friend and I got together for Spring Break. It was fun, he's a great guy. But, he does show an affinity for pornography, I suspect he likes women a bit too much. However, unsuspectingly, he showed me this pornographic website recently, with I am pretty certain of an intention of viewing mature women, and there were largely pictures/images of mature women on this website, but this website led to another website where, to be honest, many of the females looked to be, at a moderately liberal estimate, significantly under the age of 18 years old, the age of legal consent. We, perhaps to a larger extent, I, were at the least quite disturbed by what appeared to be minors in pornography. This was on my lap top, so I quickly told my friend to exit this particular website, and he did so. Then, I started panicking. I had no idea what to do. I was/am terrified that I would/am go/going to prison. I do not want to end up in prison, certainly nobody does. I am terrified that some external agency/institution knows what website we came across, and I am terrified now that law enforcement is coming to arrest me. So, the next day, after my friend left, I took out the hard drive of my lap top, destroyed the disk into pieces, and then promptly threw out the hard drive along with the rest of my lap top. I did not want the external agency that could have possibly known to raid my home and then search my lap top and find at the very least traces of illegal pornography. I do not want to go to prison, I am just so terrified I might. I do not want to be labeled as a sex offender and thus be labeled as a threat to society...I could not live with such a burden...I would rather take my own life than be shamed with such a negativity. Is Law Enforcement capable of finding such disk pieces which have been broken up in trash heaps and then reading them to find out what is on them? I hope to God not. Furthermore, what if law enforcement is tracking me online right now? What if they are reading this post/know what I am doing, so that they can use it as evidence against me? What if one or more of the members on this forum reading my post is a member of law enforcement and then takes the initiative to report it back to their fellow law enforcement officials so that they can arrest and imprison me? I would not last a day in prison, I could not survive there. Prison is for aggressive and violent people, I am not a violent or aggressive person... And furthermore, now I think I am starting to develop Pedophilia related OCD. I watch Law and Order SVU, and I watch Chris Hansen "To catch a predator" on youtube videos, as I am fascinated by such media material respectively as those. However, they greatly disturb me and now I cannot get out of my head the possibility that what if one of those criminals turns out to be me? I mean, I can say with certainty that I am not sexually attracted to children, but what if I am slowly becoming a pedophile? I mean, Pedophilia is a disease, a disease that individuals unfortunately suffer from, and it becomes a necessity to separate the disease from the individual affected by this/the disease. But nevertheless, I do not wish to be afflicted by this disease...I do not want to struggle the rest of my life, to go to prison, to be labeled as a sex offender...I keep having these fears that law enforcement such as the FBI and/or the police are just waiting to come storming into my house to arrest me. I am just waiting for them to find the broken remnants in the trash piles of those hard drive disks I threw out and then read them so that they can convict me. I am just waiting to go to prison amidst an existential background that tells me the world around me is collapsing, my life is over, I am a bum, a loser, a creep. I am only 20 years old, and my life is already over. If I go to prison, I will be murdered assuredly. I just cannot take it anymore. There are like intrusive thoughts that are currently afflicting me, either they are intrusive thoughts or internal voices, I am not sure at this point, but they keep telling me that at this point it is better for me to commit suicide rather than go through the pains of being prosecuted, imprisoned, labeled a sex offender, and being left to rot. I just wish none of this ever happened....I mean, I have never once molested/touched a child in an inappropriate manner/way. In fact, I have never touched anyone sensually/sexually in any matter at all whatsoever. I have never had sex before, and to be honest in my view, sex is not particularly important for me. I am more or less indifferent to it, and I more or less do not quite understand what makes other people so preoccupied with it (sex). I would never touch a child in an inappropriate manner, as I know that it is extremely illegal as well as to me, morally repugnant. I do not even think of touching a child in such a way, and even when it comes to adults I do think of touching mature adults sometimes, but even then thinking of doing private actions of a sexual nature with an adult(s) is actually quite difficult for me to envision, at least completely. I mean, to be honest, I am quite indifferent towards children. I do not necessarily think of them in an affectionate manner, and I certainly do not think of them in a sexual/romantic manner either. But, nevertheless, I just cannot seem to get these thoughts/voices out of my head telling me that I am a pedophile and that I am going to go to prison...I just cannot seem to do it...I just want to live a gentle, happy life, I do not want to harm any people and/or animals, and I certainly do not want to get into trouble with the law, either...I just need help, consolation of some sorts, please....

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Hello, Auptraum, welcome! :)

I suppose this forum isn't monitored. If it was - with the aims and consequences you mentioed - then there would be already some people arrested (there have been people writing about often watching CP) - and there was no such case. So I think you can feel safe here.

I'm sorry you've destroyed your laptop because of such an accidental incident. It was probably absolutely unnecessary (not to mention that you don't have to worry about the peices left!). But what's worse is your obsession, fear, and even suicidal ideations :(. Please, don't let them destroy you. I know it's very challenging, but try to see them as symptoms of your mental disease, not as something grounded / logically resulting from one visit of an illegal website. It's OK to feel unconfortable about such a visit and it's certainly good and clever that you don't want to do it again, but you can believe me that your fears are too exagerated. You surely know that some kind of paranoia is a common symptom of schizophrenia. And from what you describe, it seems you're obsessed by paranoid thoughts and fears. So I would say that it's more appropriate to worry about yout health and wellbeing than about police or FBI or any persecutions.

Are you in some kind of therapy? Can you discuss this fear with your mental health professional? Remember; you haven't done anything bad or illegal - just your friend used your laptop to click on an illegal website. You didn't wish it, you stopped him, and you're not an offender. So you don't have a reason to fear talking about this obsession with a psychotherapist. It's important for you not to keep this kind of thinking because in the combination with your depression and other problems, it could lead you to some painful emotions (which, it seems, already happened!) and even to some very dangerous (suicidal) actions.

I know it's a serious challenge to live with a mental illness, but I also know some people can cope quite well. When you work on overcoming/solving problems such as this one (the obsession and paranoia), you increase your chances to achieve a (at least relative) wellbeing.

Take care!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Law enforcement exit solely as a deterrent to crime - it's purpose is not to catch every single person who has committed one. There is no government who could afford to jail so many people, and there is not a police agency in the world with the resources to catch them. It's probable there are hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people who have actually abused children in your country and 99% of them will never go to jail. There are many more people with large collections of CP on their computers who likewise will never be visited by the FBI. Then there's you, who's stumbled once upon a website that may or may not have had underage actors. Who do you think is the priority here?

I am saying this all before considering what you've done is unlikely even a crime. I am trying to put this into perspective for you. You are a tiny little plankton among trillions of others, with some thousands or so sharks floating around who arent even looking for you.

Looking at this logically and realistically (which I know you are capable of doing), the probability of you being targeted, let alone "caught", is effectively 0. If you would list things to worry about on the chance of them happening, this would be below being hit by lightening.

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