Contamination/Bugs

In the summer, my apartment became infested with fleas because of my neighbor. I will also admit that I had no idea I was supposed to give my cat monthly medicine for it so she got fleas too. The whole situation was awful and I ended up terminating my lease because of how poorly it was handled but I’m still struggling so bad with thinking everything is contaminated including my cat. I ended up moving in with my parents and they had fleas in the house for about 3 weeks since I had to bring my cat to their house. After moving in, I took my cat to the vet and was told she didn’t have fleas or any signs of fleas and I haven’t seen any in over 2 months. I’m still convinced they are there even though they aren’t. I’ve also just developed a phobia of any household pest that can infest. I don’t want to go to wooded areas or hotels in fear I’m going to get lice, fleas, or bed bugs. I check every black spec of dirt and I have eczema on my legs that inspect as if they were bites. I don’t know what to do because I’m in a constant cycle of being convinced the fleas are gone and then being convinced they’ll come back. It makes me so sick I throw up and I even lost weight because I couldn’t eat.

VGH

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 1y

Hang in there it sounds you are headed in the right direction. There are tons of people on instagram like ohheykellyreney, Rachelsocdgarden, and Jenna Overbaugh that have a lot of helpful OCD content too!

VGH

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 1y

I’m sorry you’re struggling. I’m not sure where you are on your OCD recovery journey, but it sounds like you are stuck in the obsession-compulsion loop. You have the obsession or fear of a bug infestation. When you have the fear you do behaviors such as checking your legs and avoiding wooded places. I’m sure you also spend a lot of time thinking about this (rumination). All of the behaviors you do in response to the obsession are compulsions. Compulsions keep us stuck in the OCD loop. Because you are doing compulsions, you are stuck. The way to get unstuck is to stop doing the compulsions. I know it sounds counterintuitive, the harder we try to be sure, figure it out, the less sure we become. Have you reached out to NOCD for therapy? Their specially trained therapists can give you the tools to stop these compulsive behaviors. A great book that helped me “Needing to know for sure by Winston and Seif. Hope this helps.

Becca_13

Date posted: 1y

@VGH Thank you. I just got diagnosed and at first I was kind of happy because it meant I wasn’t crazy and I could be treated but now that I’ve processed it and realized how much it’s actually effecting my mental health it’s all crashing down around me. I’m also still waiting on my psychiatrist to prescribe the right meds bc rn I’m on 10mg of Prozac and that’s just not enough. I don’t have insurance so I’m doing therapy through my college. I think the main thing that’s keeping me in the loop is when I did have the fleas I would think they were gone and then they’d come back every few days or within a week or so. I know that it’s because I was in the apartment but because I was wrong once about them being gone I feel like I’m wrong now for thinking they’re gone

nk33

Date posted: 22w

An old enemy returns

I was home for a couple of weeks with my family and two days ago my sister found small blood stains in her bed in a separate room. Our exterminator came and looked hard. he did not find any bugs or other signs in her room or in mine. Despite this, he did believe that the stains were from bedbugs and treated her room. there were no visible signs of bed bugs other than a couple of blood stains on her bedsheets. Nobody has seen any bugs or gotten bit…. Yet. The exterminator said Its fine for me to go home normally, but if I’m worried to wash my clothes when I get home tonight. Our dryer is not very hot and given my previous trauma with bedbugs I am in a state of complete panic. I am no stranger to these as when I was in high school my dorm building had them. This dominated my every thought. I’d shake my clothes whenever i took them off, obsessively checking, feeling itchy/things crawling on me without existing avoid people in “that” part of the dorm and obsessing constantly. I never had them but it dominated my life for a long time. Now its back. I am freaking out. I had to pack my bag and leave that day. I got home, bagged the clothes i was wearing, put everything in the basement, took a shower then washed and dried all of my clothes. In my two days home, i barely slept the first night and today was better but im not doing anything tonight and im ruminating/obsessing heavily. Checking everything i can, feel itchy/something is crawling on me. It’s all i think about and given how long it can take for bbs to appear after introduction, I fear it will be until I have something more extreme/pressing to fixate on.

c0dfish

Date posted: 17w

How to keep contamination ocd from taking over?

(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.

SMS719

Date posted: 11w

Feeling hopeless 💔

My ocd has been at an extreme all time high the past 2 weeks and I am in dire need of some relief. I’m not sleeping right anymore. for context: I live in the south and found a springtail on my sheets about 2 weeks ago. This was like 2 days before our bug guy came and sprayed (it’s a normal maintenance thing here) so it’s a common bug down here and I’ve found them all over different areas of the house before. Finding it in my bed sent me on a bit of a spiral bc I started to doubt if it even was a springtail and that i was wrong and that it was a bed bug, not trusting my brain. It was a bad, sleepless night and carried over continuing feelings. Typical ocd stuff. Well two days later, I’m a nurse and I had a patient that actually had bed bugs. This wasn’t the first day they were here and I did not see any myself but it still freaked me out. There had one 2 founds after visitors came the day before. Of course I wore PPE in the room (coveralls shoe covers and hair net) going in and took everything off before exiting the room. When I came home I stripped in my garage and bagged everything down to my shoes. Threw everything in the wash and did multiple cycles. There were no other steps I could take but I still had a terrible night. Hours of ruminating and going back and forth about tracing my tracks, thinking of new ways I could’ve taken one home with me. Just checking everything. I was already on a spiral from the springtail. Having two such back to back triggering events for me so closely related has made me deteriorate significantly. I was already doing bad with my normal OCD and starting therapy here. I obsess over the thought of having bedbugs constantly and haven’t been able to sleep. I am constantly checking my bed while in it and can’t settle down. My bed is heavy too and I keep hurting myself lifting my mattress to check. But I need to check. I’ve become obsessed. I check everything and go down Reddit rabbit holes looking for new things. And of course, I talk myself into it every time. I can’t take it anymore, it’s bleeding off into other parts of my life like friendship and marriage because I am so high anxiety right now. I need relief so bad. I’ve never felt this unstable to be honest. I feel like even someone without ocd would be really struggling with this topic, nevermind me, with ocd to a point where I just started treatment. These aren’t even my normal intrusive thoughts and compulsive acts. It’s just taken on a life in the last week and I can’t find any sign that it’s going to slow down. when I think rationally I know I did everything right to prevent but I can’t shake it. 💔

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