I think I’ve washed my hands around 13 times today, and it’s not even that many compared to what I usually end up doing :(

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.