Woman who spent years thinking she was paedophile due to health condition shares earliest signs she noticed
Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.
A woman has revealed that even as a child, she was showing signs of a mental health condition which would later convince her she was a paedophile.
Molly Lambert was just 15 years old when she began to experience intrusive thoughts that led to her thinking that she was a danger to others.
What started as an idle thought that a young girl's outfit was inappropriate spiralled into an obsessive fear that she was a paedophile, to the extent that she became suicidal.
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She told the BBC: "Every second of every day I was worrying about being a paedophile.
"I thought [I'd have to] either confess these thoughts to my family, maybe the police talk to me, or I kill myself."
Molly, 22, has obsessive compulsive disorder, and difficulty with intrusive thoughts is one of the big symptoms of this mental health condition.
In a video shared on her YouTube channel, Molly, who now works to raise awareness around OCD, shared some of the early symptoms of her condition that manifested when she was a child.
"In my childhood and when I was younger, I have a few memories now of how it was manifesting and how it was presenting that was very clearly OCD," she said.
Molly described how she had always felt on 'high alert' all the time, including having fears over her parents dying or her becoming sick.
"I spent a lot of time obsessing over everything, and I felt so much guilt and a weird sense of homesickness my whole childhood," she said.
"I would obsess over things, obviously my parents dying, me falling ill, danger around me, and it was always like I just felt like I was so on high alert to everything all the time."
She also felt a dread that bad things would happen, saying: "I remember vividly lying in bed at night and just like worrying about being kidnapped and what they would look like and what they would do to me and how my family would feel and what would happen to my family."
For people with OCD, their intrusive thoughts can become so real to them that they can cause huge amounts of distress.
Not only that, but even opening up and speaking about those thoughts can be very difficult because of the fear that if someone opens up about having intrusive thoughts related to paedophilia, then this will make them suspect in some way, even though they pose no danger to anyone.
The symptoms of OCD
According to the NHS, there are three main components of OCD:
- Obsessions: These tend to manifest as intrusive thoughts, images or urges, and for Molly this was the fear she was a paedophile. Other examples could be fear of causing an accident or catching a disease.
- Emotional toll: Understandably, living with these horrible, intense thoughts can lead to anxiety and distress.
- Compulsions: These are repetitive acts that sufferers do to deal with their anxieties. These could be cleaning and handwashing, repeating words, hoarding or avoiding certain places or situations.
If you're experiencing distressing thoughts and feelings, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is there to support you. They're open from 5pm–midnight, 365 days a year. Their national number is 0800 58 58 58 and they also have a webchat service if you're not comfortable talking on the phone.
Topics: UK News, Mental Health, Health
Kit Roberts