Allergies and past traumatic events.

Last month I bought a wax melter to plug into my wall because I wanted to enjoy nice things in my empty apartment. After a couple days of having it and using it, one night out of no where I experienced a severe allergic reaction that hit super fast. My throat was itchy and my eyes burned the area under my eyes were puffy. I immediately turned it off and unplugged it and never used it again. Here’s where my OCD took over. A few years ago I moved into an apartment that ended up having bedbugs. I spent a week there and it totally ruined my mental health. I threw out half of what I owned and from the stuff I still had I found out I had some bugs living in my items. I found this out when I moved into an apartment new apartment and found a couple crawling out of my gaming console. I immediately bagged everything up and notified my apartment complex. They had my unit treated and I haven’t seen one since. I haven’t had any furniture in my room and just had trash bags with my belongings sitting in the kitchenette area. Ive lived like this for the last two years and haven’t done anything about because thinking about it makes me spiral and stresses me out. I’ve had episodes where I think I might’ve accidentally torn a bag open and they got out. So I spray 99% alcohol everywhere religiously. I have since taped up the items so they are more secure, and I planned on opening them after a certain amount of time where I was certain they were dead. Another precaution I took was using a powder called Cimexa. This is where the wax melter story becomes relevant. In one of my episodic freak outs, I I dusted the dust into the space around light switches and receptacles in my apartment. This was sometime ago and I can’t remember when exactly I did this, but I know it’s been a while. Fast forward to after I unplugged my wax melter, I’m already stressed about my taped up boxes because I wanted to move on from living in fear and open them or throw them out, whichever one I could muster the mental strength to do. While getting up for work early one morning, I was groggy and thinking about why I was allergic to the wax from the wax melter, when I get hit with an intrusive thought about how maybe the wax melter got too hot and could’ve started a fire because of the dust I had sprayed into the receptacles. After I thought that, I was panicking, freaking out. The only thing that calmed me down was prayer and I was able to go to work. I mentioned it to a coworker whose spouse is a therapist and he mentioned that I’m just fixating on something that hasn’t happened in the time since and probably won’t happen. I tried to come to terms with it just being an intrusive thought when it evolved just a week ago into “well what if that powder around the receptacles is being blown by the AC into my apartment?” Because lately I’ve been feeling a slight allergic reaction to something at home and I don’t know what it could be. I still have the wax melter but it just sits on a table in my room and I haven’t used it since maybe three weeks ago when this started. I think logically it has to be the wax melter maybe, because why would it be the dust if I haven’t experienced anything like this until now? But I’m also freaked out because what if it’s spread to other units around me? I don’t know what to do.

Estrid

Date posted: 9d

The simpliest explanation is almost always the true one. You think logically it has to be the wax melter - stay with that conclusion. No more digging deep, no more rumination. I feel you - cause I could have written your post myself. Try to ground yourself in the present moment and then move on with tge day step by step. Sounds hard with your issues in your home - could you speak with some trusted friend or relative and trust what they say and change what you have to change to live a more normal life.

Iwanttobesane

Date posted: 9d

@Estrid Thank you, I am trying. I was planning on throwing everything out and getting some furniture but all the stress has made me not want to be at home or do anything there. It was supposed to be on an off day last week but I never got around to it.

Estrid

Date posted: 9d

@Iwanttobesane Hang in there. Some days we just have to calm down and reset and then we move on.

SMS719

Date posted: 12w

Feeling hopeless 💔

My ocd has been at an extreme all time high the past 2 weeks and I am in dire need of some relief. I’m not sleeping right anymore. for context: I live in the south and found a springtail on my sheets about 2 weeks ago. This was like 2 days before our bug guy came and sprayed (it’s a normal maintenance thing here) so it’s a common bug down here and I’ve found them all over different areas of the house before. Finding it in my bed sent me on a bit of a spiral bc I started to doubt if it even was a springtail and that i was wrong and that it was a bed bug, not trusting my brain. It was a bad, sleepless night and carried over continuing feelings. Typical ocd stuff. Well two days later, I’m a nurse and I had a patient that actually had bed bugs. This wasn’t the first day they were here and I did not see any myself but it still freaked me out. There had one 2 founds after visitors came the day before. Of course I wore PPE in the room (coveralls shoe covers and hair net) going in and took everything off before exiting the room. When I came home I stripped in my garage and bagged everything down to my shoes. Threw everything in the wash and did multiple cycles. There were no other steps I could take but I still had a terrible night. Hours of ruminating and going back and forth about tracing my tracks, thinking of new ways I could’ve taken one home with me. Just checking everything. I was already on a spiral from the springtail. Having two such back to back triggering events for me so closely related has made me deteriorate significantly. I was already doing bad with my normal OCD and starting therapy here. I obsess over the thought of having bedbugs constantly and haven’t been able to sleep. I am constantly checking my bed while in it and can’t settle down. My bed is heavy too and I keep hurting myself lifting my mattress to check. But I need to check. I’ve become obsessed. I check everything and go down Reddit rabbit holes looking for new things. And of course, I talk myself into it every time. I can’t take it anymore, it’s bleeding off into other parts of my life like friendship and marriage because I am so high anxiety right now. I need relief so bad. I’ve never felt this unstable to be honest. I feel like even someone without ocd would be really struggling with this topic, nevermind me, with ocd to a point where I just started treatment. These aren’t even my normal intrusive thoughts and compulsive acts. It’s just taken on a life in the last week and I can’t find any sign that it’s going to slow down. when I think rationally I know I did everything right to prevent but I can’t shake it. 💔

Joolzzz

Date posted: 10w

Food Allergy OCD

Ugh. So I’ve been having some stomach issues for about two or three months now. I started seeing a naturopathic doctor who ran some tests and put me on a restrictive diet. The stool test she gave me revealed that I have high levels of a pathogen called Aeromonas caviae. I was kind of relieved to find this out since it finally gave me some answers to my issue. That was about 3 weeks ago. Last Friday I got my food sensitivity results back which revealed that I have some mild problem with gluten, dairy, egg whites, and other random foods. They were all low-level igG sensitivities though. Again, I was kind of relieved to receive the results at first because it helped me better understand what might be going on with my stomach. I was good for about a day. I even had one of the foods that I’m “mildly sensitive” to and had no issues. I remember eating with my husband after getting the results and telling him that I was happy and that these results were “tolerable.” That was until I visited my mom on Saturday night. I decided to tell my mom about my food sensitivity results and she just had a reaction that kind of set me off for some reason. I’m not even entirely sure why it set me off because her reaction wasn’t overly dramatic or anything. She was more just shocked and made the comment “well what can you eat then?!” I immediately got super anxious after this. I started thinking maybe I wasn’t taking the results seriously enough and that I should be more concerned. I started doing research about food allergies and it’s all been downhill since then. That night I could hardly sleep. I kept waking up every couple of hours because I was just super anxious. The next day I cooked and ate a breakfast meal that I had the day before and was perfectly fine with. Except this time I noticed that the back of my hand started burning and itching a bit. I put some creme on and took a nap and by the time I woke up I felt better. Then again later in the evening my husband and I meal prepped for the week and ate dinner. After eating I noticed the same thing was happening but on the back of my foot. It went away after a while but I started going down the rabbit hole of “what ifs.” I started wondering if maybe I was having a mild allergic reaction to the food I ate. The next morning I ate the same breakfast and brought my meal prepped lunch. I was fine all day until I started driving home and had the itching again. I got home and was super worried. My ears and throat got a little itchy. I was going to eat dinner but I was too afraid that I was having an allergic reaction to my breakfast or lunch. Yesterday I ate the same breakfast with no issues and brought my lunch. While I was eating my lunch I noticed that my mouth was burning a bit. I did have jalapeños and a salsa in my food but the burning felt different than usual. I started to get super hot and my face was burning and getting a little flushed. I spiraled for much of the rest of the work day thinking I had an allergic reaction/I have a food allergy that I’m unaware of. I ate a snack when I got home and again, it felt like my mouth was burning a bit. Now I cant stop focusing on how my mouth feels and if it’s burning or not. I ate the same breakfast this morning and it felt like it was burning a bit but I cant tell what’s real and what’s psychosomatic.

GuiltyGrapes

Date posted: 6w

Cleaning and what is and isn’t enough

sorry if im putting to much detail in here I can take it down if it is too much and makes people uncomfy. Last night was watching some ex*pl*cit content while lying on the rug in the room in my house I spend most of my time and where my family usually goes into and it caused a physical reaction. I went to the bathroom to clean up and then sprayed the shower done and put bleach on the floor but I wiped the floor with a towel to kinda clean it but idk if I put enough bleach to clean it and if I got it in the areas that mattered and I sprayed Lysol on the bathroom counter to make sure no germs of my earlier reaction got any where but I ran out of Lysol after spraying everything but I made sure to spray the rug with some Lysol before I ran out but idk if I got everything I mean I focused on the rug but I didn’t spray all of it and I didn’t spray all the stuff that was in the room. And to make things worse after my reaction earlier I put my devices and charger on the floor of my room before washing my hands or my devices so I had to clean the floor in my room I used bleach but I didn’t put it everywhere on the floor which makes me anxious and idk if I cleaned my devices or charger well enough and I’m scared they are still infected. But back to the rug i sprayed it down with odoban it says disinfectant on it but I think it’s only for hard surfaces it disinfects but I still sprayed it around on the rug but I don’t know if it actually disinfected anything. And of course to make matters worse my baby cousins toys were in the room so I sprayed them with what little Lysol I had left but idk if I cleaned it well enough but I already put them with their other toys so idk what to do. After I thought I cleaned everything I put my devices on my mattress I don’t have my blankets on my mattress yet cause I washed them like a week or 2 ago and they are just laying on my bed but not put on my mattress so I’m scared my mattress if infected since I’m laying on my mattress with my feet on my chair and my devices are on my mattress. And idk I don’t want people getting those bad germs in them and I,worry about this a lot and Ik a lot of people will say that it isn’t that huge of a deal and I want to,believe them and it helps but my mind is always telling me that even if that’s true I have a responsibility to make sure everything is clean so people don’t get hurt and it doesn’t help that I’ve been so,itchy and idk why and my little brother is also itchy idk if it’s because I don’t clean well enough and it’s my germs or not but I’m tired do I need,to clean my mattress and covers again and reclean the rug I think I do but I’m trying to go against that thinking but it’s hard because I feel like a bad persons. And today I’m scared to leave my room i feel like I’m filthy and that the rug in the other room is contaminated and it doesn’t help I need to go to the doctor today when I’m feeling like anyone I’m around im infecting

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Allergies and past traumatic events.

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