- Date posted
- 8w
My hands are red
Red and bloody from the soap and water I have been putting on for 8 hours each day.
Red and bloody from the soap and water I have been putting on for 8 hours each day.
Hi Guest1488484, You are not alone, I feel that many time, I wash my hands and in top I put hand sanitazer, Alcohol, it make it worse, my fingers get cracks and blody. when I get to that point I stop the washing for a while, it takes days to heal. Something that help me when my hands get red an bloody is Castor Oil, is a heavy oil that take long time to absorb for the skin, but it really help, you can use hand cream after and even if you wash your hands it will stay and help with the recovery. I tell myself that my OCD will not rule my life and then, I only washed my hands one or two times. Big invible hug for you.
Thank you for your support. Great job out there. Keep fighting.
I want to cry out of misery and anger. I am so afraid.
what would happen if you didnt wash your hands?
@ivefailed. I would feel that warm, numbing feeling at the front of my head that I feel whenever I am terrified. I would panic, I would stand there and not move a muscle until the opportunity to wash my hands appeared.
@Guest1488484 is that the sole reason you clean your hands or do you feel that numbing sensation because you feel dirty/contaminated ?
@ivefailed. The numbing sensation has always been there, both during my pure O obsessions and the physical obsessions. I recognize it as the physical feeling of fear and terror. I clean for a variety of reasons. It has to be just right.
@Guest1488484 what abt like decreasing slowly through each day the amount of time you can go on without washing? maybe you can challenge yourself with a timer, your aim is to increase your tolerance to distress and uncertainty. "not feeling right" is the way to go. i know how difficult it really is, easier said than done, but it's a question of trusting the process and make the leap of faith. you make the most progress when you try it without questioning and see where you land. chance is that you'll bruise a bit but you'll have made the jump over the big gap.
@ivefailed. I have recently tried delaying it for hours and days and can't say I've seen any improvement. It causes me immense distress and agony to the point I cease eating. I must keep fighting I know, but the delaying makes my compulsions that much more violent when I am able to perform them.
@Guest1488484 from my own experience delaying was the best thing that i ever did, there was almost half an year where i didnt get triggered because i would delay the addressing of a triggering event so much that i would go to sleep through the next day, well it wasnt easy at first obviously. i would try to keep the longest streak without compulsing. So i'd say you try to delay the furthest you can, and also challenge yourself to eat regardless of how you feel. The only way to break a bad habit is by learning the opposite habit. Also it helps to have a idgaf mindset, maybe when you feel the urge to clean your hands you could think "ahh fuck it idc, im tired im skipping this time"
@ivefailed. because sometimes we forget how easier it really feels to not do a compulsion at all, lean in more to the thought that it's so tiring to wash your hands, allow yourself to feel that uneasiness from uncertainty and uncompletedness, as long as you feel that you're actively destroying the neural pathway of obsessive cleanliness, it's the greatest revenge you can do against ocd. "if i dont this im going to suffer? who are you to decide? fuck it ill suffer if i have to, you oblige by me, not the opposite"
I obsess constantly about my hands being dirty and feel like I can actually see the germs and bacteria crawling all over my hands if I can’t wash them as soon as I touch something. It’s really embarrassing since people in my life have noticed this “weird” behavior but it’s a huge problem for me and I don’t know how to make the obsessive thoughts stop.
I’m really trying to be better at not washing my hands every second and I proud of myself the days I didn’t give in to compulsions, but today I feel a little defeated. I was getting ready for work and I was trying to cover up a pimple on my face, but I had sunscreen on. I wanted to put a pimple patch so I tunrned around got the paper towel in my bathroom and the towel touched the shower wall. I had a wart 6 months ago and although I didn’t have it on my hand… I did have it on the palm of my foot. I’m almost sure I sprayed Lysol on the wall but I forget because I’m ruminating constantly and my mind likes to play tricks on me. I was also in a rush today for work so that’s triggered the thoughts more. I put more sunscreen on my face to camouflage the pimple patch/ pimple. I’m scared that I contaminated my face . I even looked it up on gpt (which is another compulsion.) it was basically saying the percentage was extremely low. It’s like the answers right there but my mind won’t believe it. And I know you shouldn’t trust everything on google. Too lazy to edit, but a small part I left out was that after touching that part of the towel where I thought is contaminated …. I rolled that part on the floor and broke it off. But then continued to still roll it because the part I touched , had touched the other pieces too. I don’t know if that makes sense. So when I finally had that “just right feeling.” I put the paper towel down , washed my hands again but my hands weren’t as soapy bc it still had the tinted sunscreen on them. Washed my hands more and just got fed up and dried my hands off with the paper towel I still feel is contaminated. Ugh😞. I’ll be honest too after having the wart on my foot, I cleaned the shower in itty bitty sections. I think cleaning the whole thing at once had me overwhelmed and especially the early stages after my wart was gone I didn’t want to clean bc I was nervous I would catch another one. I had used so much Clorox to wipe down where my foot had touched the ground on the shower floor. I don’t think I wiped down the outer perimeter but I’ve recently just sprayed Lysol on the floor . I could be better at cleaning my shower more but it is what it is right now.
Hi everyone, I’ve been spending more and more time at the gym and with that means I’ve been spending more time disinfecting and washing my hands. There are certain numbers I try to “hit” when carrying out tasks like the number 4. When washing my hands I will pump the soap 4 times. But then I think about how the running water + paper towel used adds on +2 pts and so I end up at 6 but I don’t like the number 6. So to combat this I will do 4 steps of 4 actions because I don’t like numbers in relation to 3,6, or 9 ( bc of course washing, rinsing, drying 3 times would not be adequate in my mind). But I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll mess up a sequence of what I’m doing and then try to combat the compulsion I feel in the moment and try to forget the number of actions I’ve just carried out. In my mind doing something “♾️” times is better than knowing I for sure didn’t do enough. (In cases like these I equate ♾️ to an undefined/ unknown #). It’s gotten to the point where I feel like I’m wasting so many resources and a lot of my time too but I still struggle to stop until I feel like everything is fine again. I spray my sanitizer spray 4 times on a paper towel and tell myself that 4 sprays + 1 paper towel is okay because at least 4x1 =4 and 4+1 =5 but it really just drives me mad but because 4-1 =3 I have to combat that with wiping an adequate amount of times.
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