Hi,

I’m a bisexual male in high school and I think that I may be a pedophile, but I can’t tell if it’s just OCD or not. My worries began nearly a year ago when I was reading random things on an answers website and came across an article by someone that thought they were a pedophile (who had been abused in the past, but I haven’t been abused before, to my knowledge) and one of the answers said:

“From the study of criminal profiling and forensic psychology, I know that there is first an interest (usually formed in early childhood when there is no recognition of meaning), that interest is reinforced by thoughts and fantasies, which is further reinforced and rewarded by self-stimulation. One theory of paraphilia is that sexual arousal accidentally coincides with some behavior or item, locking them together in neurological brain connections (“Hebb’s Law”).”

I took it as “if you keep having pedophilic thoughts, you’ll become a pedophile.” I began having unpleasant thoughts about children immediately after that in no way aroused me or were enjoyable, and I immediately thought that I was doomed to become a pedophile.

Like I said, I haven’t been sexually abused from what I remember, but I have had sexual experiences with adults (though it was online and I actually didn’t specify my age so they didn’t know that I was a child) and I have had experiences with child porn before (kind of, when I was about 12, I masturbated to this cartoon thing that involved 13-15 year olds and looked at pornographic images of other characters that were my age at the time that didn’t bother me and I would look at again a few times).

I’ve had groinal responses before, which I’ve been told by my therapist is normal for my age (even though there was a lot of information she was only then finding out about a lot of the information that I told her about pedophilia) but I’ve had experiences that I don’t think would amount to groinal response. A few days ago, I was touching myself and when I thought of a particular body part on a prepubescent cartoon character, I orgasmed right there. I’ve imagined said body part on adults and had the same results, but when I thought of it on an adult again since then, it wasn’t doing anything for me, I was trapped in the thoughts about that child and was still having orgasms when I thought of said child again. I’ve talked to my mother about this, who’s taken psychology classes before, and she’s saying that it’s another OCD trap that I’ve put myself in. She strongly believes that I’m not a pedophile as she’s actually had the exact same worries before but she didn’t turn out to be a pedophile. I’ve always picked out the worst things to worry about without realizing it but I’m not sure if this is another thing like that. I just need answers now nonetheless.