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Hello, Thank you for reaching out. Before I say anything else, let me unequivocally state "IMPROVEMENT IS POSSIBLE"! The next question is how to achieve this? The only therapeutic way to defeat Contamination OCD is through a technique called "Exposure Response Prevention" (ERP). This is where you expose yourself to the situation you fear and then prevent yourself from performing your usual response. For example, if you have contamination OCD. If you view a trash can as contaminated and therefore, if you happen to touch a trash can you wash your hands for an inordinate amount of time. So ERP would have you touch a trash can and then NOT wash your hands. You will feel a tremendous amount of anxiety and discomfort. But after sitting with this anxiety and discomfort for some time (say,5, 10, 20 minutes) your anxiety will go down and you will be able to move on with your day. This will teach two important lessons. 1) You can handle more anxiety than you thought as you were able to avoid washing your hands. 2) The feared situation of touching a contaminated object was not as bad as you thought it would be. For ERP to be successful it is important that you do this work with a therapist. Together, the two of you could create exposures that get more challenging as you progress in your treatment. By targeting the compulsion (for instance, hand washing) and eliminating it, you can indeed, conquer your OCD and be able to live a fuller life as you engage in activities that you never thought possible. One brief but inspiring example is a member I know who used to wash his hands with soap and water very intensely after urinating. He would scrub his hands intensly with soap and then wash under every single finger nail. This was very time consuming and draining and caused going to the bathroom to be a stressful ordeal. However, after attending therapy and doing ERP he is able to urinate and then quickly was his hands WITHOUT soap and WITHOUT washing under every single nail. This is something that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. Thank G-d, he has made tremendous progress and is just one of many examples of people who have overcome their OCD.

I heave contamination OCD specifically in regards to emetophobia (fear of throwing up), and while I just joined and haven’t had any therapy yet, I can tell you that I am coping. I have a normal job, I go out to eat, I do most things normally, except I wash my hands excessively and have a few other habits that most people don’t notice. The most noticeable thing is how dry my hands are. So I haven’t beat it yet but it’s totally possible to have a pretty normal life, at least for me, and I’m hoping that with therapy it will improve!