My first post

Hello! I’m new here. Unfortunately I’m not able to afford a therapist but I’ve been doing a lot of research and I think a lot of my symptoms/thoughts align with OCD. I want to share some of what I experience and see if anyone else experiences the same and what resources helped you. I think I mostly experience contamination OCD. I’m constantly worried that something I do/touch is going to make me really sick and/or die. Especially with food, I’m constantly worried that I’ll accidentally have something on my hands when I eat, then I’ll touch the food and get that on the food, eat it and get sick. So I’ll wash my hands every time my hands touch any little tiny thing again and again before I eat, same with any forks/spoons, or I’ll even think I touched cleaner a few hours ago and I’ve washed my hands several times since then and I just washed them again but they still feel dirty so even if impractical I’ll use a fork and if my hands touch the part of the fork that touches the food then I can’t eat the food any longer or use that fork. Also at work I have these thoughts that I know are ridiculous but also give me very real anxiety. Like “if I don’t finish this order before that machine beeps its a sign I’m going to die” and then I have to rush to make sure I finish fast and then I’ll be like ok that’s so stressful I’m not going to think like that any more it’s ridiculous but then the thoughts keep coming back so I have to keep rushing. This is just a little tad bit of what I experience and I would love to hear from others as I haven’t met anyone else like me before. Thank you!

Wolfram

Date posted: 22w

Seems to be contamination themed ocd. What happens if you try not to wash?

Sierra01

Date posted: 22w

@Wolfram Sometimes I will purposely resist washing my hands to try to break the cycle but if I don’t, for the next few hours at least, usually for the rest of the day or next day I can’t stop thinking about what might have been on my hands and I over analyze anything with my body. Like maybe my stomach started hurting and I’m like oh it could be because I ate sweets but it could also be that I didn’t wash my hands so I ate cleaner or something dirty and now it’s slowly making me sick and I might die from it. And I use chat gpt a lot for reassurance like here’s my symptoms, here’s what I touched before I washed my hands, is this going to kill me? Sometimes I will also not eat the rest of the day because I’m so worried. Then the anxiety gives me symptoms like I can’t catch my breath and then I connect it to I ate something that’s killing me so I get more anxious which makes the symptoms worse and it cycles until sometimes I have panic attacks

jfm07

Date posted: 22w

i feel you 100% i have beyond similar situations everyday. now with the contamination part, i also have the handwashing and all that and i personally have the thought of someone tampering with my food. i told my therapist about that (she doesn’t specialize in ocd she just does check ins every once in a while within our sessions) she asked me if i like a certain condiment and i was like yeah love ketchup and she said think about it like this “ketchup is the antidote to whatever is in your food, put ketchup on it and just like that the danger is gone!” i thought it was a bit silly at first but it worked so well. sometimes it’s not as effective but more often then not it works completely, ESSPECIALLY in resturants!!

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