I found for me recently that going out in public can be difficult. Everything feels contaminated. I don’t want to touch anything or anyone, or have them touch me. I feel constantly uncomfortable. Grocery shopping is one of the worst things because I know how many handlers each product has had, most times ends in crying. My therapist only word of is advice is to get over it.

For the past couple of months, I’ve had a really big fear of like my hand basically going down there or objects going down there and like being contaminated. This basically leads me to be scared of being on my own and doing things without people near (because if I do everything in front of someone they would tell me if I did something), also tucking my shirt. This started last October too and I remember crying for like hours everyday. Now I’m better but I do compulsions like tucking my shirt in a specific way so I know my hand couldn’t reach there. I’m scared to even get ready for the day, brush my teeth, etc with my shirt untucked because I’m scared those objects will be contaminated or I’ll do something to contaminate them. I’ve been trying to stop this compulsion of tucking my shirt in for a while but I’m not really going anywhere.

Sorry if this is tmi. In advance, I know some germs are fine - I'm all for that, and it definitely does ease some contamination anxiety. But I have lots of anxiety surrounding going to the bathroom, specifically number two. Again I'm so sorry if this is tmi. I went yesterday, and obviously my hands were contaminated because well, they are when you go to the bathroom. But also because I accidentally brushed the back of my hand against myself. When you're done in the bathroom you obviously put underwear back on, and trousers or whatever, but I wash my hands before touching my trousers but not underwear. So I do that bit before I wash my hands, but my hand, the very contaminated part, touched like a bit of my skin at my waist. At the time, I brushed it off, thinking that my trousers will cover that anyway for the time being. But then today, I wore leggings that are kind of small on me and they weren't as high waisted. And then I got in my bed, and had a t-shirt on, and probably touched so many things. I changed my t-shirt, meaning it touched my hair as I took it off. So now I'm paranoid I have poop particles all over me. I'm convinced I need to have a full shower again and wash my hair. I'm okay with having a shower, but I barely have enough energy for that let alone washing my hair too. I don't shower every day, so with my schedule, I'm not due to have one until tonight. I just want to be able to get up, get dressed, and go about my day. But how do I do that when my bed feels contaminated and I feel like I need to change the bedsheets. How do I cope when it feels like poop particles are in my HAIR. And that could totally be possible. I know some germs are fine. But I just don't know what to do.

Started therapy recently and I feel like I’ve gone from being triggered every few days to every few hours. It’s like, I can’t even get out of bed for an hour before something new happens. I’m a stay at home dad with a 2 year old. This morning, I hesitated checking his diaper by patting him, just because any sort of touching in his diaper area makes me anxious or causes intrusive thoughts. But, I did it anyway, only for my brain to then go, “His diaper is always wet in the morning, why did you need to check?” I have this huge fear of accidentally doing something inappropriate or harmful, so any kind of touching, that isn’t completely necessary, feels harmful. At this point I’m just trying to survive between therapy sessions, but the risk of sitting with uncertainty with this theme, feels so strong and I feel so irresponsible by not trying to “figure it out”.