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.

I sometimes see posts on here of people saying their OCD fears becoming true and it’s so so triggering for me. It makes me question if I ever had OCD and if I’m just faking it. I’ve tried to accept that my fear was real. Okay? Before I knew this was OCD, I really TRIED to accept it as a part of myself because I figured if I was even having those thoughts, it must be true. But in reality it just made me feel worse in the end. It wasn’t until several hours/few days after accepting the thoughts as true did I realize they were not and how uncomfortable it made me identifying with them that way, so eventually I went back into the rumination cycle. And I’ve done this multiple times. No matter how much I’ve accepted it as real, I never come to a conclusion in the end and I just get 10x more miserable. And I am still so scared of my fear coming true as those peoples did. But I know that’s what we all fear, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. And with a new fear I just developed, (all in the realm of the same theme) I’ve also tried to accept it as real when I felt SUPER convinced and even though it felt excruciatingly real, there was a part of me that couldn’t fully believe it, because I just know viscerally that it’s not. But the feeling of it being real is just too powerful and it overmastered any ounce of insight I had left. It wasn’t until my OCD spike calmed down when I was able to see through the viel. I hate this. I have no desire to do anything that my thoughts tell me. I know what I want to be, want to do, and it’s the opposite of those OCD thoughts. But these triggering posts won’t leave. (Not really the publishers fault, it’s my ritual that I engage in). They make me come all back to square one (if I wasn’t there already) and question if I’m using this as an excuse. I don’t want to do what my OCD tells me to do, but my brain just spits, “you’re just convincing yourself you don’t want this!” as it so often now does. I’m so tired. Please give me my old self back. Please give me 100% certainty that none of this is real and my fears are not at all based in reality. My brain cannot accept uncertainty and will not leave me alone. My brain is raged and powerless without knowing why, and spiels that anger back on me to get a reaction, and when it gets what it wants, the cycle continues. And goes way longer than I had bargained for :(

Does anyone have any tips that helped them? Mine is due to a specific person and I work with them so it’s been really difficult. I’ve started ERP which has been reaaalllllly challenging and I would love to hear from anyone else that has gone through any type of contamination ocd and how they have overcome or are fighting their way through it. Thank you!l

Hi all, I’m new here and just recently got diagnosed. I’m trying to make sense of a lot of things and could use some perspective. I feel like I’m the only one who has contamination themes and does not have the compulsion to clean things, but rather to run away from the mess. I would really love to hear from someone who can relate, because right now I feel like I’m making it up. Details which might either be useful or triggering: My kitchen is the best example. I might leave a dish or two in the sink and say “I’ll clean it up soon, it’s no big deal.” But then—because of a combination of factors—it will probably sit there for a couple days. Around day 2 or 3 I develop an aversion to dealing with it. It gives me ick. And the longer it sits, the ickier it becomes—realistically and in my imagination. And because I’ve stopped doing dishes, they really start to pile up, and each day, getting started feels like more work and more confrontation with disgust. I will start thinking about how I need to do dishes, or take out the trash, and then get hit with a horrifying mental image of bugs (I’ll spare you the details) or other really disgusting things happening. That image brings me shame and makes me scared to deal with the mess. When it really piles up, I start getting images of the nastiest hoarders’ houses I’ve ever seen, and I start catastrophizing about the future I’m doomed for. So mostly I just watch tv to get my mind off it. (I swear I’m not just lazy 😔) This is true for food too. I will be unsure if something in my fridge is a little too old, so I decided to hedge my bets and I avoid it. I let a lot of food go to waste this way. The biggest problem here is I don’t throw it away when I decide it’s bad. I just side-eye it. Maybe because I know it’s silly to decide 6-day-old soy milk that smells fine has a “bad vibe,” and I think I may be able to get over it later. But then the food actually spoils and I don’t want to touch it to throw it out. I actually had a week or so in June where I couldn’t open the fridge because it smelled bad. It took every ounce of emotional energy and an external deadline to force me to clean my kitchen. I had a couple of meltdowns but it felt great to get my space back. Of course, it’s a cycle and it got bad again. The crazy thing is, I love to cook and I even like doing dishes. And I do dishes every day at work, no problem! But I’m spending so much money on takeout because my kitchen is always trashed. :( Is this super crazy? Does it even sound like contamination ocd? Am I alone in this? Any feedback would be helpful.