Anyone else used to believe they were a pedophile as a child?

[Ariii]

I am over this belief now, have been for years, but from ages 11-13, I fully believed I was a pedophile. I couldn't even stomach looking at a toddler/baby. I made a pact with myself that if I ever wanted to actually harm a child, I would kill myself first. The thing is, I've never felt sexual attraction to anyone significantly younger than me, and I don't even feel sexual attraction in the traditional sense that I want to explicitly have sex with them.

I don't know how it happened, especially considering how young I was. My best guess is being allowed unrestricted internet access at around 10, which resulted in me reading up on a lot of stories about rape, murder, etc, and that somehow worming its way into my psyche. And it being a strange manifestation of the intense amounts of guilt I felt at that age for existing. I'm wondering if I'm the only one? And did anyone else, like me, just grow out of it?

 

[ChaiTea]

yeah actually, i get what you mean. mine wasn't half as strong as what yours seems to be, but you're not alone.

i wish i could remember specific things but ive heard this kind of thing before. you're not a monster, you're probably just coping

 

[ForestGhost]

It's definitely not an uncommon thing to have intrusive thoughts like that, especially for people with OCD and similar conditions. I used to have obsessive thoughts about sending pictures of myself to predators when I was around that age.

 

[Unbelonging]

I was raped and sexually abused as a child, from infancy. Growing up with this abuse resulted in me having complicated feelings on it. It was all I had ever known and all my earliest memories involved abuse. It was very rare for me to be touched in a nonsexual way as a child as well; hugs, etc. were infrequent and although I hated being raped, the feeling of someone else having some sort of physical contact with me helped reduce the horrible loneliness and touch starvation I suffered from. I hated the abuse and it ruined my life and made me feel so ashamed and disgusted with myself, but at the same time, some dark horrible part of me almost enjoyed it sometimes, physically at least. And during my early adolescence (around the same time as you, roughly 11-13 years old) I would fantasize about it and imagine being a little child again, being abused by a grown adult. I would feel both disgust/shame and some sort of twisted pleasure remembering my experiences. I began sending explicit pictures to, and eventually meeting with fully grown men from internet chatrooms because the abuse, although it hurt, also felt familiar in some strange way. I even tried to find people on the dark web willing to kill me, promising I would allow them to rape me and hurt me as they pleased if they would just promise to kill me in the end. This plan was obviously never successful though. I felt so guilty for these thoughts/actions and believed I was a pedophile for fantasizing about an adult hurting and abusing a child. Luckily I grew out of this and now only feel disgust and no pleasure at all remembering what was done to me. And I only ever enjoyed thinking of my own abuse as a child, and never thought of other children being abused. I hope that fantasizing about memories of what happened to me and my own experiences is different than imagining other children being abused, and that it did not make me a pedophile.

 

[whiskers]

i didnt know what pedophilia was at that age

 

[Kazio]

Between 14 and 16 I fully convinced myself I was going to become a pedophile. I wasn't even sexually attracted to children, the idea just snuck into my brain and squatted there rent-free. I had constant, unwanted thoughts about children and virtually no one to talk to about it. If I ever went out of my way to harm a kid, I'd kill myself. It's honestly a bit terrifying

 

[maneose]

i remember in 7th-8th grade i would get tons of intrustive thoughts about my little sister and watched a lot of documentaries about pedophilia(theories on why it happens, how society views it, treatments and peoples stories) to try and rationalize why i was feeling the way i was. i remember after watching on video i started sobbing and kept thinking 'they hate me' (they being society) and until i found out what intrustive thoughts were i was conviced i was one and thought i was either gonna live with this secret or kill myself. i guess that's why i tend to hold alot of sympathy for people who are one's(the ones that don't hurt children), cause if i ever actually was one i would just kill myself, living with thoughts thoughts was hell actually living that way would be unbearable. pretty sure the reason they started was because i got molested by a classmate around that time and it really messed up my psyche for my entire middle school experience.

 

[manicstreetbeeper]

do you have OCD? i experienced this in combination with false memory obsessions at age fifteen, and then again at age eighteen. it really fucks with your brain.

 

[ignorableaurochs]

never had this, but I do have ocd, and it is a common obsession within that disorder.

 

[Ariii]

do you have OCD? i experienced this in combination with false memory obsessions at age fifteen, and then again at age eighteen. it really fucks with your brain.

Not that I'm aware of. Besides this, which apparently I just grew out pf within a couple years, I have no symptoms of ocd. Maybe it really just was a weird phase for me

 

[Apathy79]

I guess I was a pedophile from about 13-16 because I was only interested in girls my age.