Martin Hsia, Psy.D.

Assuming there are no medical explanations for this issue, many men I've worked with on this come to see it as essentially a form of Anxiety. There is a phenomenon called the Yerkes Dodson Law (see below; source: Wikipedia), which basically states that if we feel either too much or too little stress... more

There are some great thoughts offered by others here. I would just add that typically the most natural response to fearful thoughts is to want to stop, avoid, or get rid of them - which doesn't work if you're really caught up in a cycle of OCD or other form of anxiety. In the long run, the more... more

In our practice, many people we see have unwanted thoughts of doing harm to children - physically or sexually. As you said, these are intrusive and unwanted thoughts - not genuine desires to harm them. This is a form of OCD we often call Harm or Pedophilic OCD. What you are describing here as... more

There's a narrative approach that we call nightmare "rescripting" that may be helpful.Since we can't really control the nature of our dreams while they're happening, we try to alter them while we are in a waking state. In a nutshell, this refers to first writing out in detail the events of a... more