- Date posted
- 43w
Irrational fear of fire and volcanoes
So I’ve had this app for about a year now and barely used it. But now I’ve decided to step up and get this out of my system. I’ve been struggling with OCD thoughts about fire and volcanoes and the things that are associated with them such as burns, heat, magma, lava, and pyroclastic flows. I’m not sure if anyone else has these irrational thoughts too but I should run through them. I often feared about things like fire and volcanoes since I’ve just randomly thought of how insanely destructive they are. I keep thinking about if fire is able to travel onto my hands into other things without me knowing it especially if I’m around it while cooking on a stove or walking by (close to) a BBQ fire. I always seem to wash my hands with cold water so that I relieve myself from thinking that I “touched” it and touching other things thinking that they will burn. It’s gotten bad to the point where I would end up doing nothing all day because I would keep thinking about those things and their possibilities. Like if lava could emerge from anywhere or if a fire could appear randomly if I touch something. Because of these thoughts, I ended up giving up on some things that I used to do like playing video games and avoiding certain videos and movies that have anything to do with fire and volcanoes. In terms of movies I try to not think of any such as the movie literally called Volcano from ‘97 and also Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom in which the island is destroyed by an active volcano (why are dinosaurs associated with volcanoes??!!) Games like Minecraft have the lava bucket, in which if you’re playing on a tablet or phone, you would have to touch the screen to place something down. So after seeing something like this (like on a thumbnail for a YouTube algorithm) I would go to the bathroom and wash my hands and even wash my eyes with cold water. So overall, I’ve been very stressed out thinking about these things, but I have been doing some meditation and talk therapy but yeah it’s been getting out of control to the point where I start spiraling about it. Apologies if I sound confusing saying all of this I was just venting out these irrational fears that kept lingering.