my ocd is controlling my life. I can’t stop washing my hands and I always think they have to be clean before I go anywhere or else my whole day will be ruined. I hate the thought of being unclean and I don’t want to spread germs. I wash my hands even when I don’t have to. Anyone have any advice please?

contamination ocd has really been messing with me the last couple of days. usually i only struggle when i can connect something to possibly throwing up, but this time it doesn’t matter. so earlier, i took a shower and i also use a wash cloth to wash my body. after i showered i cleaned up my dirty clothes and towels. then when i came back to grab my phone, there was a soap speck on my phone so without thinking i just wiped it on the back of my crewneck i was wearing. well that then spiraled into me thinking what if the soap was from my dirty wash cloth. i know most of you are probably thinking it’s clean since you use soap to clean ur body. well i clean every inch of my body, including my bottom so that’s where my anxiety is gravitating towards. this sounds so ridiculous saying it out loud, but i just have so much anxiety over it. i tried my hardest not to change but i did. at first i just changed my crewneck, but then i had to change my shorts cause my crewneck touches my shorts. but then i changed my shorts. and now i feel like my shirt is contaminated cause i was wearing it with my other shorts before changing. moral of the story, i just have so much anxiety over it and i feel like i shouldn’t because it’s really not a big deal. and i don’t want to change again because that seems ridiculous to me. plus now i’m connecting the contamination to my bed since i was laying on my bed before i changed. i hate life, this sucks.

(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.

Hello! I’m new here. Unfortunately I’m not able to afford a therapist but I’ve been doing a lot of research and I think a lot of my symptoms/thoughts align with OCD. I want to share some of what I experience and see if anyone else experiences the same and what resources helped you. I think I mostly experience contamination OCD. I’m constantly worried that something I do/touch is going to make me really sick and/or die. Especially with food, I’m constantly worried that I’ll accidentally have something on my hands when I eat, then I’ll touch the food and get that on the food, eat it and get sick. So I’ll wash my hands every time my hands touch any little tiny thing again and again before I eat, same with any forks/spoons, or I’ll even think I touched cleaner a few hours ago and I’ve washed my hands several times since then and I just washed them again but they still feel dirty so even if impractical I’ll use a fork and if my hands touch the part of the fork that touches the food then I can’t eat the food any longer or use that fork. Also at work I have these thoughts that I know are ridiculous but also give me very real anxiety. Like “if I don’t finish this order before that machine beeps its a sign I’m going to die” and then I have to rush to make sure I finish fast and then I’ll be like ok that’s so stressful I’m not going to think like that any more it’s ridiculous but then the thoughts keep coming back so I have to keep rushing. This is just a little tad bit of what I experience and I would love to hear from others as I haven’t met anyone else like me before. Thank you!