- Date posted
- 1y
Contamination OCD
Hey everyone! I want to share my contamination ocd story with you all. If anyone can relate please feel free to reply. I have been struggling with contamination ocd since 2020. As far as I remember the symptoms started on the first day when I joined work after covid-19 lockdown. The symptoms were very common to covid-19 precautions so I didn't over think as it was considered normal during that time like excessive handwashing, sanitising items got from outside, changing outerwear as soon as we enter home, etc. But these habits became my shadow and I no longer am the person who I was before.. Many of my compulsions are close to zero but my most triggering substance is the Washing Machine. This fear developed around 2022 out of the blue. I am not able to telerate dirty laundry. I feel the urge to take a bath even if I feel that I've touched (not in reality) the washing machine while passing by it. My baths are so long that my skin bleeds and it burns so much that I feel like ending myself. I clench my arms so close so that it doesn't accidentally touch the machine although I know it's far but my ocd convinces me that it's not. The moment I put the dirty laundry to wash or take clean laundry to dry on the stand, I need to take a shower keeping in mind I don't touch anything else. And it's not only my hands it's my whole body which has to be far from all tables chairs bed after I go near the washing machine. Or else everything gets contaminated. I get so exhausted disinfecting the door and the sides of bed just because I go there to keep the clean laundry as my ocd convinces that I might have touched the stand (my legs) then transferred the contamination to the door and sides of bed while keeping laundry. Recently there was a big mess in the kitchen. Our boiler broke and the washing machine is just under it. While fixing the boiler the machine had to be shifted so it touched all the kitchen cabinets and since then I don't enter the kitchen neither do I let anyone else enter even after clorox cleaning the cabinet doors. I am so anxious since then.