Woman with OCD reveals the horrifying thoughts that convinced her she was a pedophile

A woman who was diagnosed with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) in adulthood revealed the terrifying thoughts that consumed her brain, convincing her that she could be a danger to children.

Molly Lambert, 22, was diagnosed with OCD last year but has been battling intrusive thoughts since childhood, which took an increasingly dark turn in her teenage years.

Appearing on the Tea At Four podcast, Molly explained: "When I was younger, I would always obsess over events and social stuff, like ‘how do I act in that?’ and go over conversations.

"I was just a really anxious little bean when I was younger - which, looking back, is sad because it was obviously OCD. I was really obsessing over Madeleine McCann and if that could happen to me, and what would happen if someone came into my house.

"I had night terrors - all the signs were there at a very young age but that was put down to child anxiety and whatever."

It wasn't until she was around 14 or 15 years old that things began to worsen after she saw a small child in a crop top and shorts at an airport and thought it was a "weird outfit", which then made her worry why she'd even thought the clothing was inappropriate.

Her whole vacation was then spent obsessing over why that thought had entered her head and whether she was safe to be around other children at the pool or beach.

Somehow, she managed to put that incident out of her mind eventually, but found that stress events and triggers could make her OCD flare up even more.

The following year, while sat at her desk revising for her exams, she remebered the thought from the summer before, adding: "From that moment, my life was forever different.

“From that desk day, I was just a different person - obviously everyone around me didn’t know what was happening and just thought I was stressed about my exams. Every second of every day I was just thinking about how much of an awful person I was."

These intrusive thoughts began to spiral and make her worry that she was a pedophile, a danger to her family and friends, and even fear that she could become attracted to her family or even her dog - despite having a phobia of dogs.

"Now I’m out of it, it’s so irrational, but all these themes are irrational. If you can understand OCD from a perspective of someone wiping the side five times, because that’s irrational, right?", she explained.

"But so is me thinking I was a paedophile when I was 15 - I obviously wasn’t a paedophile, it was my brain.

"OCD is a neurodivergence so the way you process information is different, so it gets stuck and you have a loop. You just can’t forget something."

She revealed that she didn't initially think she had OCD as "I’m not clean, I’m not organized, I’m quite chaotic," she admitted.

"So I suffered for years without knowing about it, so I did not fit into [the stereotype]. But OCD is obsessive and intrusive unwanted thoughts. There are different themes within that, so harm, sexual, moral, the health and contamination - what you guys all know.

"Basically anything that you can become anxious about is a certain theme. Mine was the pedophilic, sexual, and harm themes because they scared me the most so I was attached to them the most."

She began to realize she had OCD after stumbling across a TikTok video of someone else who had similar intrusive thoughts without the stereotypical 'cleaning' symptoms many associate with OCD.

Molly finally opened up to her parents after having a few drinks one Christmas Eve, and they helped her to get therapy and finally a diagnosis.

While many people fear being labeled, Molly found it helped her compartmentalize her condition and separate it from herself, by having a medically-diagnosed reason for the thoughts that were popping into her head uninvited.

She found that the intrusive thoughts manifest around a person's biggest fears - so the thing she would least want to be is what her brain was convincing her she was capable of.

Molly revealed: "When I was growing up it was my fears about the world and danger and the things I could be put in, and then it flipped to ‘what if I am the danger?’ So I was just covering every area, basically.

"And I think we can all agree that pedophiles are the worst people in society, so my biggest fear was being that. That’s the top [worst] thing you can be, and it was almost like my thoughts of being a murderer were kind of easy compared to the pedophile ones because that’s the worst.

"The pedophile one was so distressing because why have I even had a thought that I could be that.”

The intrusive thoughts have had a lasting impact on her reluctance towards relationships, explaining: "When I was 15 - obviously that’s the kind of time you’re having crushes and figuring out your sexuality and having firsts, and I was thinking I was a pedophile so it kind of weirdly removed all of that.

"I should have been having crushes on George and Henry, but I was like ‘aghhh’. I’m joking about it but obviously it’s awful, and it kind of removed all of my nice thoughts about intimacy, sex, and romance from my mind entirely like ‘that’s not for me - I’m not allowed to do that’."

Since then, Molly has tried various types of talking therapy and even hypnosis, the latter of which she did not find very helpful for her OCD, and can manage the condition better.

She chose to speak openly about her experiences on her own platform to raise awareness of the condition and to reassure others that they are not alone if they are having obsessive and intrusive thoughts.

Check out the full episode with Molly Lambert and other episodes of Tea At Four on YouTube and Spotify now.

Featured image credit: Tea At Four/Four Nine