The Fear of Being A Pedophile
A new form of obsessive thoughts - and a new disease of our times?
For several years now, I have observed a significant rise in clients - especially male ones - who suffer from massive fears of having pedophilic tendencies or impulses. Even though these fears are often unfounded, they may cause intense symptoms like massive emotional pressure, depressive episodes, restlessness, sleeping disorders, losing focus on studies and/or work, or even self-inflicted injuries. In diagnostic terms, however, what most of these clients are dealing with are in fact obsessive thoughts, a disorder that has to be clearly distinguished from pedophilic disorders. The article describes the differences in obsessive thoughts / pedophilia anxiety disorder and the clinical diagnosis of pedophilic disorder as a sexual orientation.
https://www.counseling-office.com/papers/sex-therapy/pedophile-obsessional-thoughts.phtml