bad idea but just had to pull my own little placebo effect for comfort... haven’t really been doing good recently; i’ve felt better about my own confidence since i’ve cut my hair and found my style, but because the health ocd is such a heavy weight, i can’t seem to find happiness that i’ve done all these good things about my self confidence. all that my life revolves around now is being clean and free of illness. TW: MENTION OF CONTAMINATION/HEALTH COMPULSIONS/HARM because of my contamination ocd, i cling onto every little thing i hear that could affect it. example: once heard someone say that if i could hold my breath for over ten seconds, then i don’t have a virus... so what do i do every morning, midday, and night? hold my breath for ten seconds and hope i can do it, otherwise... well it’s over for me. my detriment was hearing my mum say that she had read somewhere about hot drinks (tea mainly) being able to wash down viruses that start in the throat. i remember that... and now, sounds silly, but i genuinely have an obsession with drinking tea ?‍♀️?‍♀️ started off small, i’d drink a cup every now and then, but lo and behold, feeding into the obsession made it worse. every time i felt dirty, every time someone came near me, every time someone breathed on me, my ocd would say: KETTLE, TEA, NOWWWWWW, DON’T BREATHE, JUST GO MAKE TEAAAA so i’d go and make tea, drink it, and it kept getting more and more frequent... until it got incredibly dangerous. every day, as i got more worried, i’d start drinking it hotter and hotter until my tongue and my throat would burn with every sip. but even though i was in pain and my mouth was burning, my ocd kept telling me that “this is working” because now “the viruses are being killed”. i’m going to eventually give myself third degree burns if i don’t stop ?✌️ now my tongue is completely red, and i see that it is, but i just can’t stop with the scolding hot drinks because i’ve convinced myself that i’ll become ill if i don’t drink it. it’s almost as if when there isn’t a hot drink beside me that i can just reach out and grab, i become incredibly nervous and close to mortified. it’s become a detrimental comfort to me now. i can’t even relax with people beside me because if they do so much as stand up and the air hits me then i’m out making another friggin cup of tea. so now i’m sat, my face is pink and my cheeks are burning just out of the blue, and now the big old question: am i having a hot flush or am i dying? so, my little placebo: had to take paracetamol and antisickness, solely relying on that for comfort. i guess the better comforts i have are listening to swan lake and reading animal farm... i also have good old animal crossing to relax me