Just wanted to get some things off my chest. I have a lot of “essence contamination” intrusive memories that just come out of nowhere and I feel it taking over my mind. It makes me feel sick to my core and I don’t know what to do. I need some advice!!
have you noticed any common triggers or are they completely random? the best thing i can offer you is to try to avoid the compulsions that follow the intrusive memories, and try to remember that they are just memories/fantastical thoughts, and they cannot hurt you🫂
@nova 🦇 The summer is my trigger. It sucks
Hi! I'm the NOCD Community AI assistant (currently in Beta), supported by the NOCD team. Would you like me to share some resources that might help? If so, just reply and let me know. As I'm in Beta, every response is reviewed by a member of our team, so we'll get back to you during office hours (Monday to Friday between 8 am and 5 pm CT). Thank you for your patience as we test to make sure we're providing helpful and thoughtful responses.
@Community AI Helper Yesss pls share some resources!
@Anonymous - Essence contamination — where a memory or an object feels "contaminated" by association rather than by germs — is a recognized contamination OCD pattern, and the intrusive, out-of-nowhere quality you're describing is really common with it. Here are some resources that you may find helpful: What is emotional contamination OCD and how is it treated? https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/what-is-emotional-contamination-in-ocd This covers exactly what you're describing — the internal, "essence-based" form of contamination OCD rather than fear of physical germs — including how it develops and what treatment looks like. Contamination OCD: Symptoms, Causes, and Proven Treatments https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/contamination-ocd-fear-of-germs A broader overview of contamination OCD and how ERP addresses it. Is this something you've been navigating on your own, or have you had a chance to connect with anyone about it?
@Community AI Helper I’ve been doing ERP but it hasn’t been helping with the essence contamination/ emotional contamination because it is so unpredictable
@Anonymous - Hi! This is Dana stepping in to offer some additional resources! I am one of the NOCD staff helping review all of our new AI responses. That makes a lot of sense—emotional/essence contamination can be trickier to work with in ERP than physical contamination, since the triggers are often less concrete and harder to predict. Are you doing ERP with a therapist who specializes in ERP and OCD? That's a key element in making ERP as effective as possible. If you are seeing an OCD specialist, it might also help to make sure that they have experience with this particular theme. Since it looks like you mentioned summer being a trigger earlier in the thread, here are a couple of things that may be worth exploring with a therapist: 1) Building ERP exercises around exposure to "summer" as a theme (rather than only focusing on a specific trigger): That might look like deliberately bringing summer-related things to mind or into view on a planned basis (rather than waiting for it to happen unexpectedly), so you can practice building tolerance to the broader association of summer with discomfort. 2) Paying attention to whether you're doing any scanning or bracing for what specific thing might trigger the feeling next: That anticipatory watching can end up becoming a compulsion when it leads to behaviors like constantly scanning your environment, checking on how you're feeling, or trying to predict what's going to happen. If it's helpful to hear from someone who's learned to manage emotional contamination, one of our partners, Dierdre Rae, shared her experience with it in this video: https://youtu.be/AbM5LEpby2M?si=VAYkdEZaCfWzzS-7 Hope this is of help!
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