- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
Sounds like some good exposure opportunity practice!
- Date posted
- 5y
So far I can’t bring myself to do it. What do I do?
- Date posted
- 5y
The best thing to do is to accept that it's a possibility that happened and do your laundry anyway. The point of the soap in the washer and the heat from the dryer is to get things clean and kill germs. I have severe contamination ocd and have to do my laundry in a communal laundry room that people leave a mess alllll the time so I'm not just saying this flippantly because I can imagine your anxiety right now. The best thing to do is not avoid the machines; instead, throw some laundry in and show your ocd who's in charge. Good luck!
- Date posted
- 5y
I am worrried about the bug body parts spreading in the clothes.
- Date posted
- 5y
@Stealthhero22 I understand. But even if there are, which you would probably notice if you checked the machines, they will wash out when they go through the rinse cycle! That's the whole point of doing laundry!
- Date posted
- 5y
@Stealthhero22 I have found far worse things than bug legs in the machines I need to use ?? but the alternative is to not do my laundry...and that's not an option. It will be okay, I promise you.
- Date posted
- 5y
I also have contamination OCD and laundry plays a big part of that. I’m very particular about laundry and prefer that I do it myself as a result. Given my living circumstances, I often have to use communal machines or shared family machines. I can’t say I know how you’re feeling exactly, but I can relate to the situation where a laundry/dryer machine suddenly feels unclean. There are some compulsion mechanisms I have used in the past to cope with this kind of situation but those are not healthy to give in to and just make the OCD worse. Like @ans87 said, don’t avoid the machines, try to accept the uncertainty, and show the OCD who is in charge. I know that’s not easy, I struggle with that myself on a more than daily basis.
- Date posted
- 26w
Fungal laundry
Related posts
- Date posted
- 24w
My mom made chicken soup today, and she left raw chicken skin on the sink. There were some dishes next to it and I grabbed some tongs and put the chicken in the trash. My mom washed all of those dishes including the tongs I used and now I'm scared of salmonella. I didn't say anything to her about the chicken bc she usually gets frustrated and says I worry too much. I made sure to wash my medicine cup before bc I'm sick and I was scared of getting salmonella on top of my sickness, but i regret of not doing anything for my parents. My mom already washed all of the dishes with just dishes soap. What do I do?
- Date posted
- 23w
I was home for a couple of weeks with my family and two days ago my sister found small blood stains in her bed in a separate room. Our exterminator came and looked hard. he did not find any bugs or other signs in her room or in mine. Despite this, he did believe that the stains were from bedbugs and treated her room. there were no visible signs of bed bugs other than a couple of blood stains on her bedsheets. Nobody has seen any bugs or gotten bit…. Yet. The exterminator said Its fine for me to go home normally, but if I’m worried to wash my clothes when I get home tonight. Our dryer is not very hot and given my previous trauma with bedbugs I am in a state of complete panic. I am no stranger to these as when I was in high school my dorm building had them. This dominated my every thought. I’d shake my clothes whenever i took them off, obsessively checking, feeling itchy/things crawling on me without existing avoid people in “that” part of the dorm and obsessing constantly. I never had them but it dominated my life for a long time. Now its back. I am freaking out. I had to pack my bag and leave that day. I got home, bagged the clothes i was wearing, put everything in the basement, took a shower then washed and dried all of my clothes. In my two days home, i barely slept the first night and today was better but im not doing anything tonight and im ruminating/obsessing heavily. Checking everything i can, feel itchy/something is crawling on me. It’s all i think about and given how long it can take for bbs to appear after introduction, I fear it will be until I have something more extreme/pressing to fixate on.
- Date posted
- 12w
This is a long one lol but basically, a couple of weeks ago I went to the toilet (#2, sorry for the tmi). Let's just say it was messy. I remember that a speck of.. #2.. Fell off the piece of toilet paper. This was probably the worst thing that could ever happen. I can't remember clearly but I'm pretty sure my jeans were on the floor underneath near where the speck could have fallen. There was also a towel. I don't know exactly where it fell as it was so small, but I made sure both the towel and the jeans went in the laundry basket and I cleaned the floor near there. Fast forward to like the next day. My mum does most of the laundry, so she will have picked up all the towels and clothes from the laundry basket and taken them to the wash. The problem is the speck. I don't know where it went but if it was on the towel and she picked it up.... Thus, contaminated mum. And she also puts clothes away that are dry. I remember that day she put my hoodie in my wardrobe, and I haven't worn it since because I feel it is contaminated. I haven't worn the clothes that have touched the hoodie. This leaves me with not a lot of clothes. And today I finally snapped and picked up a sweatshirt that had maybe touched the hoodie. And now I'm just sat here spiralling, wearing it. What if it touched the speck? What if the speck touched my mum and then touched the hoodie which then touched the sweatshirt I'm wearing? Please I'm so scared.
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