First post I need some advice. My ocd has flared up so much to the point I'm waking up on edge. My partner doesn't even want to listen to my problems anymore so feel I have no one to help me. I've lost sence it what is the correct thing to do in a situation. I'm trying hard to sort myself out. But it's difficult when you don't know what is the right thing to do. And all I want to do is spray everything with dettol. My biggest thing is dog poo. I don't even own a dog. But my family all have dogs. So no one understands my fear. My sons book bag touched the bottom of the opening of the inside of the car door. My thought is he's been to people's house he's walked outside he could have trood in some dog poo residue could of trode it on the side of the car when climbing in the bag touched it. Now it's on the bag. I want to ignore these thoughts and just let it go. But it's just so intense fear. That what if there is some dog poo germ on his bag. Argh someone help? I'm so fed up of these thoughts and connections. I just want to be the person I was 9 years ago. Also what erp examples are people doing with there therapist? I have tried looking online for examples of some but struggling. These are examples to do with contamination, hand washing, germs dirt. What have you done that has helped. Thanks xx

Melkate

Date posted: 5y

I understand the anxiety must be difficult for you, firstly don’t get too worked up on this. Spraying everything is a compulsion and it will just reinforce that you need to do it again in the future with same/similar situations. In terms of ERP, ocd is ocd, despite the theme ocd is still ocd so you can use similar techniques for this, you aren’t alone at all you just have a different fear. The content is just different. For ERP perhaps you could try and start off with smaller triggers so like obviously not checking and not cleaning his bag would be a big trigger, so maybe for now try to extend the amount of time you wait before you do the compulsion, so you can get used to sitting with the anxiety and gaining some control over your ocd, then after you could try and being near the bag, or being near the thing you fear has germs on, and sitting in a room with that, then a bit closer, then eventually even touching the bag, I know that sounds scary, but the idea is to make you realise that the perceived threat isn’t as scary as you thought, start off with small things towards it that give you less anxiety, then higher, eventually those bigger exposures won’t seem as scary and you won’t be as worried about doing them. Hope this helped!

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond