because I was overcome with anxiety, I was laying in bed, obsessively “checking” my reactions to thoughts of children contrasted with my reactions to things I find s*** to “confirm” whether or not I was s******* attracted to children. at some point, I thought that I would have to use actually s***** thoughts of children for this “testing”, at which point I had a mental image of a real child I saw once naked. the image was not based on reality and was completely fabricated. this mental image lasted for less than a second before I chased it away and felt completely repulsive and unwanted while it was there. at that point, I put a stop to the whole “checking” and did my best to move on from the whole need to “test” to begin with.

rationally, I am fairly sure I am not a p********. that is not what is at question. what I worry about now is the thought of having done something morally awful to that child or in general by “invoking” that mental image on purpose with my obsessive need to “test”. I am not even sure how purposeful the thought was; I was contemplating using something like that for the “testing”, but it came unbidden without consciously crafting that specific kind of image. it was creepy and disgusting, and I am fully aware that my obsessive need to constantly “self-check” is the problem here; but that does not change the main crux of the issue, which is that I fret that even if the context was “benign”, I have crossed a moral line and violated a child nevertheless. was it so, or was it merely something mentally disturbed that nonetheless harmed only me? I am planning to go to counseling over this.