Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

Grocery shopping with OCD

I have such a hard time grocery shopping. I could never just pick up the first item off the shelf and put them in my cart, I gotta get like the third or fourth item off the back of the row. I always assume the first items were touched or tampered with, or returned, or when I used to work at a grocery store years ago I know a lot of cold products that customers didnt want, were left out for a long time before they were put back on the shelf . I got to inspect cans and boxes for dents and make sure they’re not smashed. Always gotta make sure things aren’t open. Gotta check expiration dates. I just watch how other people shop and they don’t have a care in the world, just picking up the first item putting it in their cart and moving on . It’s very exhausting just to go grocery shopping.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 22d

I was just about to make a post about grocery shopping! Getting really frustrated. There's always a couple things on my list that I feel like I can't buy.

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Tea and Honey Oh and when the food goes on that wet dirty conveyor belt at the check out. I’m like 😐😐😐😂

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous lol!!!! 😅 hang in there!! It's going to get better for both of us!! :):)

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Tea and Honey Yes.. one day! If u don’t mind me asking, u said there’s a couple of items on your list you feel you can’t buy. What are they and why?

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous Today it was peas ands suet for the bird feeder. And also popcorn. I feel like I might go to hell if I buy them

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Tea and Honey I see, that sounds tough. just curious. What is suet?

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous It's bird seed and softer stuff squashed all together and you hang it out for the birds :)

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Tea and Honey Oh ok. Interesting 🙂

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous 😀😀😀

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Tea and Honey I look forward to the day we can just shop ocd free 🙂

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous Me too!!!!!!!:):):)

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Tea and Honey Thank you for your replies. It’s helped me out a lot

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 21d

@Anonymous It is so good to know what we are really not alone in this.

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 21d

@Tea and Honey Yes! Do u mind if I follow you on here? I haven’t followed anyone yet 🙂

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 21d

@Anonymous That would be wonderful!!! Be glad for you to!!

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 21d

@Tea and Honey 🙂

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 21d

@Anonymous I'm here if you ever want to talk!! :):)

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 21d

@Tea and Honey Same! This is why NOCD is so great 🙂

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 21d

@Anonymous I think so too! They are the best!! :):)

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 21d

@Tea and Honey I’m still new here. I started on this app maybe a month ago? Still learning how it works 🙂

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 21d

@Anonymous lol, welcome!!! Glad you are here!! :):) I'm a mom. I've been struggling with OCD most my life. Have you tried ERP therapy? It's a game changer!

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 21d

@Tea and Honey Thank you! I’m glad I’m here too. And glad you’re here too. I’m a dad and I’ve had ocd pretty much my whole life. And finally getting help with it. If u read my posts you’ll get an understanding what I’m struggling with lately

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 21d

@Anonymous I read your posts!!! I understand. This is such typical OCD. You have to give yourself grace!! You are doing the best you can against a terrible disorder.:):):) We all understand you in this app. It's all okay, and it all get better:) I want to help you if I can!! How long have you been doing ERP? You shouldn't feel discouraged. OCD is one of those things that moves very slowly. Progress is very slow. I have found that if I just move a few centimeters forward a day, that that is enough

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 20d

@Tea and Honey Thank you, I’ve been trying erp i guess about a month now? So many failed attempts but every now and then I could kinda do it. It’s just so difficult.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 20d

@Anonymous A month is just barely scratching the surface!!!!! I've been working on certain concepts for years or even decades. I don't say that to discourage you. But you do need to know that a month is basically ZERO time in the whole scheme of things when we talk about OCD recovery. You are doing a great job !!!!! You have really only begun!!!! You are not failing. You are just starting!! OCD recovery is very very, very slow . That's OK!!!! Tell yourself every day that the journey is going to take as long as it takes. And that's OK. The point is that you are on the journey. And that is all you need to do !!! We can't make it any faster. I wish I could. I want to skip ahead to where I'm functional. But I find that I still waste hours of my day being stuck in my OCD. even though I've been doing ERP for years.

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 20d

@Tea and Honey Yea some days are just worse than others. Like some days I’m very confident and just completely fail the erp and ocd wins. Other days I have some success. It took me like 30 years to finally get therapy for it. I’m glad I did. I just take it day by day. Thanks for your uplifting reply. What made u get help?

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 20d

@Anonymous Just has been a daily struggle for so many years. I've been to several different therapists because I just wasn't very functional. The NOCD therapists were my favorite. Super useful.

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 20d

@Tea and Honey Pretty much as far back as I can remember, I’ve always had ocd. I was able to suffer in silence to myself and just live with it. But lately I’ve developed some that were too hard to deal with on my own , so here we are

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 20d

@Anonymous That makes total sense. It actually is good to bring the OCD out into the light. So this is a great opportunity for you to get better than you ever have been before.

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 20d

@Tea and Honey Yes, I feel like I made the right decision to finally get help. You wanna know what’s funny? I went to Costco today, and bought some strawberries, and when I was leaving, I noticed the cashier placed the strawberries on the front part of the shopping cart, where the babies sit. I never put my groceries there because I just think it’s so contaminated . And today it looked so dirty, and it took everything I had not to exchange them out or return them. Especially since the strawberries package had vent holes on the sides 😩😩😩

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 20d

@Anonymous But the fact that you didn't return them was a total win!!!! Today I felt like I was going to be doomed for buying diabetic test strips. I bought them anyway.

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 20d

@Tea and Honey I had to do the whole …. “ If my family gets sick from eating these “…If they do oh well.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 20d

@Anonymous Yep!!! That's a great response !!!!:)

Anonymous

Date posted: 22d

My experience is more a health food obsession where I have extreme anxiety going to the store because I don’t think I’ll be able to find items that fit the standard I’ve built from reading articles. While eating healthy isn’t a bad thing to try focus on. At the same time I’m exhausted when I get out of the store from all the worry

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous Do u find yourself having a hard time just shopping because the things you buy might not be healthy enough?

Anonymous

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous Exactly

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous I see. Mine is like a contamination issue I believe.

Anonymous

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous That sounds right. Just wanted to express that simple life tasks can be affected with OCD and you’re not alone. Thanks for the post

Cali_Guy_41510

Date posted: 22d

@Anonymous Yes. You’re welcome , and thanks for your replies

hollow

Date posted: 22d

I just uses gloves when going outside.

Epanonymous

Date posted: 15w

Contamination, with the compulsion to avoid messes

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.

Contamination OCD

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 13w

I sat outside of Dollar tree today for an hour, considering whether

buying a rug and nail clippers would send me to hell. Why do I worry that these things would send me to hell? I'm always gauging every impression upon my mind and heart, and wondering if God is speaking to me or not. I often wonder if God is warning me against little things that could send me to hell. What I have learned is that people who have OCD often have a lot of confusion about hearing from God. Sometimes their OCD is telling them they can't do something, but they think God is actually warning them. I'm working on this. Like I said, it took me an hour, but I eventually went in and bought the rug and the nail clippers. Was I SURE that I was going to be safe and not destined for hell? No, I went in and bought the things even though I still wasn't completely sure if it was the right and safe thing to do. But in the end, I think I am being obedient to God when I take steps against OCD. And so, even though I still had uncertainty, I went and bought a rug and nail clippers. And now I'm going to trust in the promises of God that I am still saved, even though I did something I wasn't sure about. I've had a lot of practice doing this over the years. I wish just making a shopping trip was straightforward and not full of rumination. But life is not that easy for me. OCD sure makes life harder than it has be. Lol 😀😀🤣😂

Dev12_

Date posted: 12w

Compulsively over sharing

It use to be so much worse but I notice I over share so bad, some examples are like whenever I’m in the store and I buy some random things and I’m checking out I always try to sneak in a reason for the stuff I’m buying so the cashier doesn’t think I’m weird even tho it’s probably regular stuff. Or if I think I said something wrong to someone I try to find a way to add in something to say to ensure they heard me correct. Most times this has worked other times it’s just me overthinking it. It’s so silly but annoying sometimes. I always over share things in case someone thinks I’m weird or something. Sometimes I even do it on here, if I think my post is confusing or someone could take it out of context, I’ll say something in the comments in case someone thinks I’m strange. It’s hard to kinda just let people think whatever, but my ocd seems to obsess a lot over what others are thinking. It sucks. I always have to know what they’re thinking and if I can’t I’ll try to get them to not think that way but I can’t help what anyone’s thinking about me.

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Grocery shopping with OCD

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