Trigger warning, contamination ocd, female anatomy, sex. Do u ever feel disgusted by your own body and how do you deal with it? Sometimes I feel like I can never be clean enough. If you're a person with a vulva you know there are a lot of "nooks and crannies" and I feel like I'm probably missing an area when I shower or that I'm not doing a good enough job. I feel disgusting and like if I am intimate with someone I'll probably gross them out. It doesn't help that when I was like 12 I got bacterial vaginosis because my mom never taught me how to properly clean myself (she was super repressed and old fashioned and barely taught me anything!) It was so embarrassing when i started having symptoms and she took me to the gynecologist and the gyno said I had bv from not properly washing. I have a lot of shame from that. I don't wanna let anyone go down on me because I'm afraid I might be dirty. I use a mirror to make sure I inspect everything down there and if I don't do that for a few weeks or months (and actually start to feel happy again) then I start to feel gross again and like I need to obsess over it again. But the thing is sometimes if I'm not obsessing, I *do* miss a spot. And so when I find that I am like, "see, thats why you need to obsess over it!"

TW: themes of sexual abuse, exploitation, etc Hello I am feeling a bit distressed today. I realized I have pretty “sex negative” views which I feel like many stem from OCD and trauma. Some of my feelings are good and I would argue most stem from a healthy place but I feel like they impact my life and emotional state on an unhealthy level. For example feel VERY strongly about CSA, rape, sexual exploitation of any kind, unethical sex etc. I have a strong pattern recognization ability and see how so many things people deem as “sex positive” (porn, onlyfans, casual sex etc) have a net negative effect on society (abuse, cheating, stds, etc) I think a good amount of the population agrees with these values so I don’t feel alone in that but I feel like I spend so much time being sad over these things. I used to listen to a lot of sexual music growing up (mainly mainstream pop like Ke$ha and Rihanna) and then in my teens I listened to a lot of rap. I noticed how this made me sexualize myself growing up which makes me very uncomfortable and sad. Another thing which makes me sad is how so much of the population was exposed to pornography at a young age. I recently was at a estate sale and there were old playboy magazines and this man was showing his son who looked to be about 9 the magazines and it made me so uncomfortable because that’s grooming and abuse. I didn’t know what to do so I just said “ew” but I still feel guilty I did not do anything more. I just don’t know how to cope with these feelings. I am also Catholic and the abuse crisis has deeply impacted my ability to practice my faith. Two priests whom were close to my family got exposed for sexually abusing children. This is a big reason I have not been able to go to confession (which leads me to being unable to receive the Eucharist, which is a big deal). I constantly obsess over the fact I won’t be able to tell who is a sexual predator and it brings me great distress. Also, sexual music, sex scenes in movies, sexual jokes etc all make me deeply uncomfortable. Hearing about my friend’s sexual lives also makes me very uncomfortable and sad for them, in a way, if I deem their experiences unethical. I feel very upset when people sexualize themselves. I also hate when I experience sexual feelings myself and often find myself wishing I was asexual even though I wish to get married and be a mother. I feel judged by society for being a “prude” “puritanical” etc which feels incredibly invalidating as a lot of my trauma involves exploitation under the guise of “liberation” I don’t really know where I’m going here I think I just want to know if anyone feels similarly. I don’t find many people with views and feelings similar to myself. A lot of people online who I feel like my views overlap with (other Catholics, radical feminists, etc) have views which stem from a lot of judgement and hate whereas I feel like I just want everyone to be safe and happy. I think a lot of my feelings stem from my trauma but obsessions from OCD? For my other forms of OCD (contamination, harm, etc) I feel like exposure therapy helps but I don’t know how I’d go about exposure therapy with this then without further causing more distress. I feel very nervous opening up with anyone about this theme. If you read to the end thank you so much❤️‍🩹 I am sorry if this post was triggering at all to anyone else I just didn’t know where to go to open up about this :(

I'm keeping it light hearted but I really desperately need some help. Just to preface this is very tmi. I thought it was just gonna be a quick bathroom stuff. No! That would be silly of course, so number two decided to screw things up ROYALLY. And please bear with me because I am coping with humour 😭😭. So I went, but sometimes, tmi, I struggle to.... Get it all. Out. If you know what I mean. Which is pretty awful to the point I'm like genuinely praying. Because you can't clean up properly if you're not done. So I'm in the bathroom, trying, for over half an hour. And I finally give up pretty much and try and clean up. Oh no, that was a huge mistake. But what else could I do? It was so messy that I wanted to just get in the shower and be done with it. Onto the things I'm worrying about I guess. On the tp (tmi, I'm WARNING 😭😭) it was.... Messy, and there were very loose specks on the tp. Which is an issue, because I used wet wipes which needs to be binned and not flushed, so I have to carry the tp-wipe combo over to the bin, which means carrying it over where my legs are, and thus where my clothes also are. I hate it. I'm now paranoid specks fell into my underwear! Great! Love it. I'm also paranoid specks or just #2 in general went on my hand. And, believe me, with the state of things, it was POSSIBLE. So when I'm finally done and wash my hands, of course that isn't going to feel like enough. I have really short nails, so short they're painful, and I'm always terrified stuff gets under them. So, I use a nail brush while washing my hands. I also filed them down (which HURT) because I'm convinced that could get rid of anything underneath them. But it still doesn't feel enough. Because I have loose skin and hangnails around my nails, and I'm paranoid as well that stuff gets under dry skin. Not to mention my hands are so dry from washing that they're cracked and flaky and they peel, so I am worried that #2 or dirt gets under the flakes of skin. I know it sounds stupid, but I am so scared. Usually it feels irrational but it was such a state that I'm convinced there must be a speck of it on me somewhere. On my hands. And I'm terrified. I know I need to accept uncertainty but I'm struggling right now.

(long read ahead, sorry lol) I’ve struggled with ocd for as far back as I can remember. I find that it gets worse with stress, and recently I’ve really been struggling with the contamination aspect of my ocd. I’m worried about it becoming unmanageable and negatively affecting my relationship with my partner. I’ve been living with my boyfriend since January (got kicked out of my house a week after I turned 18, it’s for the better though my house is toxic as hell) and I love living with him, but him and his family aren’t as concerned with cleaning as I am used to. My boyfriend and I have been together going on 2 years and there’s been many times throughout our relationship that his struggle with depression severely impacted his ability to keep up with cleaning his room. This is something I completely understand because I’ve struggled with it too so i’ve often helped him clean, and since i’ve moved in he’s done so much better at keeping up with cleaning (especially because he knows about my issues with clutter, mess, germs, etc.) He is really good at being accommodating towards my needs (not overly so, i’m aware that recovering includes accepting being uncomfortable), but it’s so hard for me to differentiate between what is the normal standard for cleanliness and hygiene and what’s excessive and unhealthy. I get so stressed out every single day over the thought of how dirty everything is. He has 3 cats that mainly stay in his room (he has a catio attached to his window/side of the house) and dogs which stay on the opposite side of the house and backyard, so there is fur everywhere constantly (i’m also allergic to cats but it’s not severe). I can’t stop thinking about how they are getting germs from their litter box all over everything. They also used to piss under his bed and in his closet when his room used to be a mess and it’s soaked into the floor so no matter what it stinks. It’s so hard to bring myself to walk around the house without slippers because my feet will get visibly dirty and my socks would get covered in hair. I always think about how my boyfriend sometimes walks on the rugs in the bathroom in shoes and all the germs that spreads. There’s so many more things but this is already getting long and I am shaking just thinking about how unclean everything is. I want to deep clean the entire house myself so I can get it to where It’s not like psychological torture everyday and it’s easier to maintain but I have been so busy I don’t have the time. I am worried about my boyfriend thinking I don’t like living with him or that I think that’s he’s dirty but i don’t. We have had several conversations about this and he’s reassured me that he knows none of my obsessive thoughts are personal but I still feel so bad about it. I would like to get therapy to help work through this but currently that is not an option for me. I know things will get better once I get through the main things in my life that are causing a lot of stress and therefore making my ocd flair up, but I need advice on what to do in the mean time. I keep having moments where all I can do is shake and cry and clean and I feel bad for my poor boyfriend who can only sit next to me and try to comfort me or help me clean. I also don’t want to make him worried that nothing he does is enough for me (i’ve also already talked to him about this and told him about how I can never even be clean enough for myself and that I don’t think he’s dirty). There’s been many times where I want to tell him to do things that I think might be my own unhealthy compulsions (ex. not wearing shoes in the house or in our room, not getting into bed with socks on, making sure to completely dry off before getting out the shower, put makeup and jewelry back where they belong right after using them, etc.) but i can’t tell if they’re reasonable or not and i try to not tell him unless it’s something that severely distresses me. I’m aware that everything is going to have germs no matter what and have been using NER’s to help manage my thought spirals/rumination. I know that I shouldn’t keep doing compulsions because it just offers temporary relief and makes the problem worse because nothing will ever be enough. I just feeling so overwhelmed and hopeless and exhausted and want some feedback.