Does anyone here with contamination ocd get so triggered and exhausted that you end up trying to avoid your triggers? They said avoidance only strengthens the ocd but it’s truly hard especially when I avoid my triggers my ocd goes down a lot.

Avoidance is a compulsion, and it’s SUPER common for all OCD themes. When you say avoidance makes your OCD “go down”, what you actually mean is that you temporarily feel less anxious, but in reality, your OCD is actually getting worse. It strengthens that message you’re sending to your brain that these thoughts are real and important and dangerous. Part of recovery is purposefully exposing ourslelves to these triggers. This makes our anxiety heighten in the short term, but ultimately reduces our OCD in the long term. If you already have a lot of avoidance behaviors, cutting them all out cold turkey is probably too much too fast, so go slow, work with your therapist to decide what level of discomfort you can reasonably handle, and only do it when you can resist all other compulsions.

it is hard but have you ever come across a trigger after avoiding it? the anxiety that comes with is soo much worse after avoidance. that’s why it worsens it. plus, with avoidance you aren’t actually giving yourself the chance to just live. you’re only cutting yourself off from everything else more and more

It’s so hard Jaz. As I mentioned , for awhile I got over avoidance then suddenly I saw fresh blood by my foot. Dealing with that was sooo exhausting that I could not leave my house. Now I don’t have the courage to go back and use the bathroom. I use such a far one and even that is not great. It’s taking so much of my break time to go there.

You are right. I didn’t mean to say avoidance makes my ocd go down but rather it’s actually the compulsions. And lately I noticed my fear of leaving the apt is getting worse and worse which I cannot bear to have since I have school and a job. But the toll of my compulsions is so hard too. It’s 1.5 hours a day and then some days it’s 2 hours.

I’m glad to hear it worked for you. I’m trying but the fear of disgust is too much but I know I have to do this so I’ll try less and less

Ceej for me it’s just pure grossness and disgusts. I actually know it’s quite hard to catch illnesses from blood and especially not from the ones on the bathroom floor from that time of the month but regardless I find it still sooo disgusting and the thought of it really grossed me out

And by that I mean it’s hard to catch illnesses from blood just by looking at it or being next to it but still the disgust overpowers me