I haven't been clinically diagnosed with OCD but I do feel that I have a mild form of contamination OCD and my counselor thinks that I have OCD too. What I'm struggling with is the fact that I find semen really dirty for some reason, but I can't stop washing everything around me because I don't know how much I'm supposed to clean up when the topic is relatively taboo to talk about. For example, I wash my bathroom handles, my clothes and anything that have came in contact with my semen pretty often with clorox wipes Everytime I need to clean up, I take a shower for around 1 hour washing certain parts of my body multiple times. Everytime I wash one part of my body, I have to wash my hands in the shower before I move on to another body part. I also wash the shower handles and the bathtub sometimes while showering. I have to touch sink handles in a certain way to prevent contamination. I also have rituals around doing the laundry, because I'm worried that my clothes could have semen on them. When I put my clothes in the laundry, I have to wash my hands before I touch the buttons on the laundry machine to start the cleaning cycle. I also wash certain parts of the laundry machine that might have come in contact with my clothes with clorox wipes. When I wash my hands after I suspect that I may have touched semen, I get really sensitive whenever I feel that a drop of water might have splashed on me and I have to wash the area where water splashed on too. That is pretty much all my rituals surrounding my contamination OCD (probably). I have a few questions for the community: How much am I realistically supposed to wash my hands after a release of semen? Do I have to wash objects that MAY have come in contact with semen? (Not certain if it did) How dirty is semen in general? Like is it more or less dirty than snot for example? I would highly appreciate an answer. Thanks for reading!

Thanks!

I still have to wash myself because there's residue on my privates which my hand will touch and the cycle continues. I'm not sure what you mean by knive.

I hope that can help! I also hope you're doing better now. It sounded unfortunately quite severe.

@Anonymous Thank you. My contamination fear is a lot better though i occasionally wash but I think that's more because out of habit. But my checking is what's been problematic. OCD is relentless. The earlier you can cut out the compulsions it's easier. I also had elaborate washing rituals when showering, like I have to do each body parts in order and make sure they're covered in soap suds and sometimes I forget and I'd have to do over and over to a point I would be in shower for several hours and I'd feel sick. I also had contamination fear over cold sores which I often had sometimes new ones while other sores were healing. But once I stopped and relaxed a bit, it hasn't been a problem. One of my therapy ERP included sitting on a wet rug (which I thought was because of my toilet overflowing though more likely cause was from showering-there was a leak in the tub) while I had a piece of chocolate sitting on toilet seat and I had to wait five minutes before I had to eat chocolate with my fingers. Without washing my hands that were sitting on the wet rug. I also was scared to eat chocolate with my fingers because when chocolate melted in my fingers it reminded me of... So yea. It was so brutal I was crying and crying and of course tears was also my fear. But when I look back at that time to where I am now I'm glad I did it. They still bother me but I don't cry when i eat chocolate with my fingers anymore :) you deserve freedom from this too!

@Crazy.Cat.Lady Thanks for sharing! I'm so glad about the progress you made on your journey! I have a question about the method that you suggested where you wait before washing hands. Did you go on life as usual during that exposure or were you trying not to touch things before washing?

@Anonymous Thank you :) Good question. So in the beginning the best I could do was to not touch things. Oftentimes I would be "stuck" and try not to touch anything. I also didn't trust myself, well I still have this issue, so I would just stand by my camera recording me doing nothing. I tgen slowly touched a few things but that was not helpful because I would remember what things I've touched and cheat by cleaning those items. So in this case I had to rip the bandaid off and touch anything and everything. Especially things that were hard to clean and touch until I've exhausted myself. Yes I was crying the entire time. But what was I going to do? I was so exhausted I had no energy to clean the whole apartment, even showering was just too much. So I said I'm going to sleep and see how I feel when I wake up. Usually after I wake up I'm in a better spot so I can choose to let go of my wanting to clean. If I had cleaned before going to sleep not only would it be counterintuitive, I know I would likely to make more mistakes by not cleanibg the right way. Also, overtime I figured if I ate chocolate off a toilet seat after touching a wet rug I can just lick my fingers and by the time I touched my entire body I was so "filthy" I started to not care.

@Crazy.Cat.Lady I pushed myself when I felt Daring but to make a sound choice to let go I needed to clear my mind. Because I can reason with myself that I can if I wanted to clean but would it help me in the long term? And this is a hard thibg to decide when anxiety and OCD has more power on you. Another thing that may help you is, so I used to have to shower after every time I used the toilet. Even if i just lifted up the toilet seat cover. I would even clean the toilet before showering. So what I did was things like not showering for a day, then two then three. I even went as far as wearing the same underwear. It was really hard to do but it really helped me.

@Crazy.Cat.Lady Thanks for all the help!

Thank you!