I’m pretty sure I just spent 20 or 30 minutes scrubbing my bar of soap... and then the loofa. And now the soap is resting in a salicylic acid (acne wash) bath. This is fine. Totally fine??

Yes!! I feel the same way and it makes things so difficult. Sometimes I wonder if maybe it's just the OCD telling me my intuition is wrong but I really don't know...

Sometimes my brain can sort of see two possible scenarios and at times I can understand I should probably go with the least catastrophic one and sit with the uncertainty but other times I truly do not know what to do and I don't really know how to figure it out

I feel you. When I was younger I used to wash my hands close to 30 times an hour until they were chapped and bleeding. Battling that compulsion was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do

I have contamination OCD also. Are you in therapy for it? Any tips?

I'm doing ERP now for months and it's really hard. I have a hard time finding that normal cleanliness line or even identifying intrusive thoughts about contamination.

Maybe what a normal person does is what you used to do before the ocd began. Instead of asking you could observe how others wash their hands in public settings or in the kitchen

Omg sameeeee!! That just made me feel so validated! And then I'm supposed to just figure it out but that feels wayyy to risky or then I'll just keep cleaning because I seriously don't know.

I can't even remember how I used to clean before OCD and I have no clue what my pre OCD self would have done in certain situations that come up now. I wish I knew I would try to do that.

Same here but I’m not in therapy yet so I deal with 1 hour or so of compulsions a dat

Lark, this is going to sound insane, but I just straight up did the opposite of my gut instinct. With hand washing, for example, I limited myself to when it was completely necessary (before eating, after using the restroom, etc.). If at any other point, I felt like I had to wash my hands and I couldn’t find genuine rational behind it, I would straight up lick my hands and then convince myself that if the germs on my hand were going to kill me, now there isn’t anything I can do to stop it. At first, I’m not going to lie, it was incredibly difficult and I found myself having OCD attacks on the daily, but as time went on, my biggest compulsion began to slowly go away. The shitty part about OCD is just as one compulsion goes away, another takes it’s place, but it’s just something that I’ve found I have to take slowly and rationally. I know what I did may not work for everyone, but I’ve sworn by this method (of essentially doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what your OCD wants) for reducing the severity of every single one of my compulsions.

Yes, but it hasn’t really helped:/ 4.5 months of erp and I still would get a panic attack during every exposure. Taking a little break rn bc the extreme anxiety for so long has made depression/suicidal thoughts pretty bad. It’s not everyone’s reaction to erp tho. Start w small challenges and work your way up:)

Oh SAME. There are many times when I legitimately don’t know what a “normal” person would be doing/thinking in the given situation. And asking is sometimes interpreted as reassurance?

I never received actual treatment for my OCD since I can’t afford therapy and I’m afraid of the pills but in my opinion, if you catch it early, you can definitely avoid using outside resources. Compulsions intensify the more you give into them but I was able to resolve mine after two years of compulsive hand-washing without help

For the showering in particular what helped me was setting a time limit and only allowing myself to wash one time. This helped cut my showers way down. It feels really weird at first but I quickly got used to it but I had to really force myself to only wash once.

Ishika thanks for sharing. I heard about this as well and glad it works for you.

Ishika- how did you do this? Mine has worsened and I’m in this spiral of really long showers and excessive cleaning and hand washing. Since I allowed it to spiral out of control I’m having a hard time going back to my old ways