How can I cope with OCD that's disrupting my daily life?

Hi everyone. First time here. I suffer from Contamination OCD. I have a good support group in friends, family, and my boyfriend, but I have not met anyone else with OCD and I needed to reach out to others to find help. I first got OCD when I was 17 (I am now 33) and was able to go into remission, but COVID brought it back. I was struggling at work (which was outside with the public). I found a therapist and she wrote me a doctor’s note suggesting I be allowed to work from home. My work was not accommodating at all and only offered me FMLA leave, so I took it as my only option and eventually got on Short Term Disability. The whole process took forever and was incredibly stressful. My leave was supposed to be a time of healing and it just made my OCD symptoms worse. My employer basically treated me as though I was trying to get out of work and proved to me that though they talk about the importance of mental health, they don’t take mental health seriously. I ended up having to leave my job “involuntarily due to health reasons” as they would not grant an extension nor let me return with any restrictions/accommodations. My therapist seemed good at first, but it became clear that she wasn’t really helping me. She would often use our sessions to vent about the insurance company and in one session, she basically called me a hopeless case and kept saying “I don’t know. I am concerned. I don’t know how you are going to be able to function” and threw out the word hospitalization, though she did backtrack on that one. I struggle everyday. I am worried that something from outside of the home touched something clean and is now contaminated. I need help working through this. I am constantly looking for reassurance, question if things are clean, wash my hands, use too many disinfectant wipes, and take showers upwards of 50-60 mins. I feel like my mind is being taken over by my OCD, I’m losing time, and it’s straining my relationship. For anyone who is struggling with contamination OCD brought on by COVID - any tips? My therapist never gave me anything specific to work on with this - to help me focus on something else. I am in the process of finding another therapist, but until then - any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I got diagnosed with ocd recently from my therapist after having years of symptoms since I was a toddler and recently I have had a terrible dream with beastiality in it about 3 months ago and I woke up and cried. I went through the day as usual and then I told one of my friends and I sobbed because that is the last thing I have ever thought about in my life. Luckily my friend was there for me, but then the OCD kicked in. I’ve been having horrible thoughts and I’m scared, I don’t want to do anything to animals never have I ever had thoughts of such. I have two pit bulls that are my sweet babies and I have never had thoughts of anything to do with beastiality in my whole life and now I’m 20 just now being scared of this. It has been the worst ocd obsession I have had in a long time the last one I had lasted 3 years. I’ve been wanting to lock myself in my room and not look at my dogs because I’m afraid to even let them sleep in my room anymore. I stay up all night sometimes because I’m scared I’ll see another dream. My mind is starting to make think I want those thoughts and I’m so scared I’m tearing up whole typing this. I’ve been contemplating suicide because of this fear of doing sexual acts to an animal I would rather not live. I hate living like this and it has been hard to sleep with my partner because now I’m afraid to have intercourse which I have always been able to do with my partner no problem. But now the beastiality OCD has ruined my life and I don’t know what to do.

I have extreme fear of rabies and it triggered my usually bearable ocd to the point i cant function normally. Whenever I pass by something on the ground resembling a bat my brain tells me its a bat and that I have touched it with my hand and that I have rabies now. Sometimes I take a photo of potential triggers to be sure I wont ruminate later aka ask myself what if it was this or that and i just look at the photo i took and be sure its nothing. The triggers are also becoming harder to bear everytime, for example 3 days ago it was night and I saw something small and dark on the ground and didnt see it clearly, phone was almost dead and i couldnt take a photo of it, probably wouldnt anyway because there were two people nearby so i just left myself a note in the phone that it was nothing and I didnt touch it, but you guessed it, my brain says its a bat and that i touched it, creating a false memory and now i feel like i cant know what actually happened..rn i cant think of anything but being terrified of dying of rabies because i cant trust my memory. I feel like Im going crazy