hey. i have contamination ocd & this is my life.

ever since last year when i was in my senior year of high school, i started to wipe down things when i’d return back from school. sometimes it would be my iPad (school issued), because i had touched it with greasy hands or when i had placed it somewhere “unsanitary”. i’d only do it once a week, or whenever i felt it was truly dirty in my mind. then i started cleaning my phone, when i saw dust or something get it on after returning to school. honestly, i don’t remember much after that so let’s fast forward. fast forward to around the beginnings of may, we had exams coming up and my best friend was coming over to stay the night and so we could study for exams. i remember that day i cleaned my room from top to bottom, and even when they had arrived i still continued to. i cleaned my phone off, and even their stuff a little. i even had to shower right after waking up, with them still at my house. i also remember prior a couple months to this i had started cleaning things around in my room because i hadn’t properly had my own room up until this year in january. a little later in may came my graduation, i was perfectly fine with people (this line is mostly referring to my parents) touching me, as i let my mother put a necklace on me that day. but, after i was graduated i was kind of stuck at home. so i cleaned stuff more regularly. i got a desk for my room, i built it, and i had to triple clean it in order for it to be clean to me. every month gradually got worse, and i found myself cleaning almost all the time. clorox wipes had become my best friend. and i found myself thinking that my own parents were contaminated. right now, i wish i could go back to may. may was way better, or i’d even go back to june, july, august, and maybe even september. right now i’ve been stuck at home for almost two months without leaving and leaving my thoughts to twirl around in my head. i have online college, and you would think that to distract me from my compulsions. but right now the situation got worse. last week i could go downstairs and sit on the couch (after cleaning it) and eat (then brush my teeth and clean my mouth) and be on my laptop and phone with no worries at all. now i find myself in my bed most hours of the day staying up until sunrise and not leaving to even go to the bathroom, or eat, until it is past 6pm. everything is dirty to me now, my room, my desk, my bed, my sheets, my parents, myself. even after showering, and scrubbing a million times, i’m never clean enough. i’m so scared, and sick of this feeling. and i have a very special event coming up this weekend that i don’t want to miss for anything in the world, i just don’t want to not feel clean for it. i just want my life back, my parents, my friends, my partner. me. i’m too young to have this horrible monster taking control of me, but i just can’t seem to ever find a way out.

hanysm@gmail...

Date posted: 43w

Maybe this post can help a bit https://app.treatmyocd.com/community/posts/2047383

holygrohly

Date posted: 43w

Hi friend, I'm f21, also struggling with contamination ocd. My hands are struggling to move even as I type this because they're so dry and cracked from overwashing. My ocd started a little differently but like yours, it incrementally got worse as I developed more rituals and compulsions. I just want you to know you're not the only young person going through this, just barely starting their life and having this huge beast called ocd to fight as well. It feels unfair because it is really hard. We can fight this though! We are stronger than this! I let my ocd go unchecked for nearly 2 years and now I get stuck in the shower sometimes for up to 7/8 hours, washing with bloody and cracked hands. But even I won't let ocd stop me from trying to conquer it. There's a show called Scavengers Reign on Max that features a character named Cayman and he's really sad. So he ends up "feeding" this sadness to this little alien creature that ends up becoming bigger and more menacing the more Cayman dwells in his sadness. Eventually the alien becomes this huge beast and it uses Cayman's pain to destroy things around it. I've started to think of my ocd as this beast. It started small but I kept feeding it with anxiety and fear and now it's this huge beast. But it can be dealt with. Watching that show gave me a visual metaphor for my ocd and imagining my ocd that way kinda helps me realize that it's not myself, it's another entity almost. Anyway, I just wanted to say that you're not alone in this. Stay strong. Things will get better. For all of us 🩵

No matric ce...

Date posted: 43w

Are you seeing a therapist and practicing ERP and accepting uncertainty?

c0dfish

Date posted: 18w

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.

bun <3

Date posted: 16w

everything around me feels contaminated :((

sorry this is super long i just wanna know if anyone else has been thru something similar bc i feel super alone 🩷 i have super bad contamination ocd. it was bad already but my house was like my safe space until a few months ago someone brought something into my house that i considered ‘contaminated’. and so then i felt like that part of the house was contaminated, then it spread to everything outside my room (since family is moving around touching stuff) and then somehow i got convinced everything in my room except my bed is contaminated and i need to wash my hands after touching it. in my mind its like the contamination just infinitely spreads to things after the tiniest bit of touch. idek what im afraid of anymore or even what the original thing was but i can’t let it go. when i have to wash off contamination i have to wash at least 4 times or until it feels right, or sometimes take rlly long showers and wipe down all my stuff. i even throw away food and clothes or just whole items sometimes because they feel so contaminated i don’t want them in my space. i can’t be super near people or have anyone touch me, and i also can’t bring anything new into my room since it had to go through the entry of my house which feels contaminated. i feel like all i do is lay in bed and then wash my hands and do compulsions so i can go eat or do other stuff around the house. also i never go out because i’m bc people outside make me feel dirty, and i hate thinking about how many people have touched stuff in stores or in public and stuff. so im just in my room worrying all day. i feel so trapped and the contamination/avoiding it is all i think about anymore i barely have time for anything else and im never present when i talk to people because im worrying about if i accidentally got contaminated. im starting erp next week and knowing that im going to have to expose myself to things is really freaking me out. does anyone else have this kind of ocd ? im exhaustedddd 🥲🥲💔

Contamination OCD

miss_anonymous

Date posted: 11w

Late night vent/ contamination

I know I keep talking about this and I swear I’m not trying to be annoying but over the weekend I had gotten some new Clorox wipes because I was running low on some at home. I noticed when I came home I still had 2 half full containers left. When I got home everything was fine until I accidentally knocked my setting spray off my bathroom counter. Now mind you I had 2 warts on my foot about 4 months ago and my ocd makes it worse by making me believe the virus is still on the floor. Immediately when it dropped, I cleaned it with a Clorox wipe. This is where it went down hill and my brain started to spiral. After disinfecting my setting spray, I started second guessing if the Clorox I used on it was from the same container I used for the shower floor. I usually wear gloves before getting a Clorox wipe and sometimes I don’t. I was trying to do “ERP” and instead of washing my hands 3x… I just washed it for about 5 seconds . I then put my lipliner and gloss on and now I feel like I contaminated my lipliner. I threw my lipliner in my makeup bag and my makeup bag has a blush brush , hilighter brush and some other makeup stuff. I just wanna throw that whole bag out now. It’s exhausting and this might seem dramatic but I couldn’t get out of bed because all I could think about was everything being contaminated in my bathroom. I leave for Florida in 3 days and I’m freaking out because everything isn’t going how I want it to. I’m just exhausted. I just bought some new Clorox wipes from Kroger and one of the Clorox dropped on the floor and now I think that’s contaminated and now I’m confused which one fell on the floor and which one didn’t. They were next to eachother and I forgot that fast. 😞☹️ Before going to Kroger I felt like god was talking to me or my intuition and telling me don’t get another one. So now my minds making me feel like it dropped on the floor on purpose. Idk know if it’s god talking to me or my ocd. I was sleeping all day because I don’t wanna get up and go in my bathroom and I don’t even wanna put my makeup on because I don’t wanna take a chance of getting a wart on my face. I never did a deep clean after my wart but I have used so much Clorox in the bathroom to just to dinsifect. I’m still nervous to even do a deep clean because I feel like I’m going to pick up the virus or bacteria. Also if there’s any Christian’s reading this I would appreciate just a prayer bc I’m tired and exhausted which I know seems funny from being in my bed all day. But mentally I’m exhausted. I don’t even wanna go to Florida anymore. I know the only way to get a wart is to get it from skin to skin contact. Oh! I almost forgot I had a dentist appt today and this girl was shadowing my dentist and she greeted me and shook my hand. It happned so fast. I didn’t go home right away and wash my hands and I’m freaking out about that too. I’m just overwhelmed . 😞 I know this was long and I appreciate you reading.

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond

hey. i have contamination ocd & this is my life.

Related posts

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Be a part of the largest OCD Community