Options from people? Today our pest control service came over and touched rodent bait blocks and touched mouse droppings with his bare hands. Then he touched our front door. Then I touched the doorknob then my car door. I wiped down both door handles with a Lysol wipes, is that enough? Is this a reasonable place to stop the compulsion? Or does this merit more caution?

TW: mice/rodents; contamination/virus; feeling unsafe in my home Hello, I'm new to the community, and new to OCD at 42 years old. My OCD is about contagion but specifically around mice and a virus some of them carry (hantavirus). For background, my husband and I have been in our house for a little over 10 years, and in all that time, there have been mice coming in and out through what we've discovered are chew-holes in the sill plate where the house frame sits on the foundation. Mice are gross, but we never saw evidence of them in the actual living spaces (only attics and cellar), and I was okay knowing they were there. I was a new mom when COVID hit, and the anxiety over that ratcheted up my general anxiety, which was never awful but definitely had me thinking more about contamination and contagion in a big way. Two years ago, I found mouse poop in the upstairs where the bedrooms are, got some traps, never caught anything, and then ended up actually SEEING a mouse come out from behind the toilet. It went back into the wall before we could catch it. After that, I got steel wool and expanding foam and plugged up EVERY hole in the house--mostly pipe holes for the radiators, toilets, sinks, etc. And I was still OK. Then, two months ago, I was in the cellar doing laundry and I saw a larger-than-usual dropping, bigger than mouse OR rat droppings, I thought, sitting on top of the dryer. I was like...hm, that's strange. I mentioned it to my Discord writing group, most of whom live in the Midwest (this will become relevant), and one of them said "oh, you have to be careful with mice, they carry Hantavirus. My husband had it a couple of years ago and it was really scary." I didn't know what hantavirus is, so I looked it up and found out you can contract it through breathing/contact with mouse poop, urine and saliva. The sickness that results from hantavirus has a 40% mortality rate, which scares the heck out of me b/c that's really high. Further research told me that the CDC started tracking Hantavirus in 1993. Between then and 2022, the latest of their available data, there have been fewer than 900 cases in the entire US; 96% of those cases were west of the Mississippi, and there has been in that time only ONE confirmed case in the state where I live. So, objectively, the risk of me or my family contracting this virus from our local mice is low. And I wouldn't think about it at all, except that there are still mice in the house. We've had a pest company setting and managing traps this whole time; recently they also came to plug the existing holes in the foundation, but they keep finding mice in their traps and they found a new chew hole near one of the cellar windows this week. We're working on a more aggressive solution (1/4" hardware cloth over the places where they're getting in), but it's slow going and in the meantime, there's still the risk of coming into contact with mouse stuff. But my brain has ballooned this into something so much bigger than that. I'm washing my hands so much that they're starting to crack and bleed and the skin feels tight. I'm afraid to go in the cellar to do laundry, because that's where the mice are. My husband has no problem going down in the cellar, which means I'm afraid to touch things around the house because what if he touched something with mouse virus on his hands? And even though I've plugged up all the holes where mice could get into the living spaces, I'm still obsessively afraid of every single surface--what if a mouse touched it? Ran across it? Peed on it? Even though I don't see mouse droppings in any of our living spaces, nor evidence of them chewing anything, I'm still losing my mind with fear. And although I've heard that folks with contamination OCD typically clean a LOT, I'm afraid to clean because what if I move the mess (we both have full time jobs and a 6 year old, so cleaning isn't always top priority) and I find mouse poop under there? This is an absolute nightmare. I hate not feeling safe in my own home. And I'm frustrated because I was FINE for so long...I don't know where this OCD suddenly came from, but it went 0 to 100 almost overnight. My loved ones are concerned and want to be supportive, but they're also not afraid and have never experienced anxiety nor OCD, so their "helpful" advice is usually along the lines of "can't you just decide to be afraid and do it anyway" or "have you tried not feeling this way"? I know this is a weirdly specific OCD but that's my story. I've been working with a therapist now for a few weeks but her breathing techniques, while somewhat helpful, aren't enough, so I need to have a talk with her about what comes next for treatment. Thanks to OCD, my world feels like it keeps getting smaller and smaller. I want to just find a tiny chair where I can sit and not move and not touch anything until all the bad stuff goes away...but I know that's not realistic, nor is is healthy. I'm just...exhausted, and frustrated, and scared, and really hopeful that I can find a way through this.

I went to the pool and laid on a lounge chair that had bird poop on it, and I got bird poop on my leg and brushed it off my leg because it was dry and like crumbs I didn’t think of it at the time until I was on my phone then I realized a few moments later about the bird flu and I have a cat do I now have to shower and wash my hair and clean my phone or is that just me worsening my OCD should I leave it alone or should I do those things because I just wanna keep my cat safe

So today I’m getting my car back from my grandparents bc it had no ac and they fixed it for me the day I gave them the car I was having ocd bc I touched a little tree air freshener no the air freshener itself but the outside of the wrapper and then I touched my steering wheel and I didn’t clean it before I gave it to them and I was having really bad ocd that day about it and now it’s coming back because I’m getting my car back today and I have a cat so I’m just always overthinking bc of her with the things that have chemicals on it common sense makes me feel stupid for feeling this when but I genuinely get overheated having to pick up this car today because I don’t wanna deal with it and it’s hair wash day and laundry day and I feel I should clean my steering wheel and ik I’m gonna have to wash my hands a million times and everything I touched after touching the steering wheel like my phone and the car handles and my front door handles. Should I just try and not do these things bc it’s common sense that doing all the this is necessary but I feel I need to I know I’m just needing reassurance I know I need to do nothing but I always stress about my cat and I go to the laundry mat to do my laundry so I don’t wanna be sitting there overthinking about my steering wheel bc I could of just simply wiped it down but I don’t wanna repeat the cycle of giving in to my ocd