- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
Wanting to share this with you both. It helped me a lot. I'm not leaving the house except for medical appointments but its helping me live more calmly in my home https://youtu.be/zoXXRRC3opk
- Date posted
- 4y
Thank you, its quite long so I will watch it later. Thank you very much.
- Date posted
- 4y
It's a really difficult time, especially for people with contamination OCD. The boundary between reasonable and unreasonable precautions has shifted. Here's the iocdf webpage all about covid and ocdhttps://iocdf.org/covid19/#more-info
- Date posted
- 4y
Aw thank you so much, and I'm sure it was hard to avoid reassuring me. But I do appreciate it. That's exactly it, I'm angry and tired because of the ocd bully and so angry thaty partner needlessly upset my safe zone. I coukd maybe see through it if it was something nessecary. But then again I shoukfnt be putting restrictions on get actions because of my worries no matter what. It's just a nightnare and I'm so fed up with it
- Date posted
- 4y
I can definitely relate. I’ve barely left the house in the past 6 months. I haven’t been to the grocery store or anywhere public. I like to go running, but even that feels difficult these days knowing I’ll likely pass people on the street. I’m moving soon, and I’m feeling extremely worried about movers touching my things 😬 I honestly don’t know what’s reasonable and what’s not.
- Date posted
- 4y
We are thinking of moving soon too and I'm dreading it!! I will be out a fortune in surface cleanser. I've already ordered shrink wrap to cover my mattress. Its just horrendous, I'm even watching my partners everymove to see what she hads touched and hasn't. Ocd and that 0.001 percent that you might over overlooked. It's a bully as who can ever be 100% certain of anything. Perfect certainty doesn't exisit and our tired brains are always searching for it. I try to talk myself round. Reiterating that I've done my best with the cleaning and that's all I can do
- Date posted
- 4y
I am also on this wild ride with Covid anxiety/contamination OCD. Totally relate to your situation. I've just started therapy through NOCD and it helps to have someone just listen to my irrational fears, then give me tools to help put those fears in their place. She also acknowledges that right now, it can be tough to tell the difference between a sensible habit and an OCD compulsion. So I do my ERP exercises as assigned, and try not to get discouraged when the anxiety takes over and I give in to whatever compulsion numbs the fear.
- Date posted
- 4y
Thank you, I am trying to use the erp but it's hard and I am getting angry at my partner because I imagine in my mind that she didn't wipe things down correctly. And I keep asking her to reassure me which I know is wrong. For example I left her to wipe some items down that someone she works with brought In the house. She wiped it but admitted it wasn't thouorgh as it was an electrical item. Now my mind feels its contaminated. Normally this would be fine but because of covid I'm worrying and feel that it needs wiped again. Do I just resist and trust that it's OK? It's the 5% uncertainty that covid is living in there that drives me mad. She was then fiddling with the item and wouldn't wash her hands she looked at me with distain when I made her use hand sanitiser. I feel her hands are contaminated with covid now. I know I shoukd use ERP for this but what if I am being rational and there was a risk and I then ignored it and 2 weeks from now we have contracted the virus. My head is mangled.
- Date posted
- 4y
@Rosie38 Why does going through this, every little thing makes me irritated and angry
- Date posted
- 4y
I don't know. Maybe because we get scared. And exhausted from the constant state of worrying. And it's so hard to sit with the anxiety and do nothing. So everything runs together in OCD glop and we get mad at everyone around us for upsetting our safe zone. I wish I had just the right thing to say that isn't a reassurance, that would help you, me and everyone else here get better in the snap of a finger. I don't, or I'd be the hottest thing in OCD therapy right now ;) Let's just keep fighting the fight. OCD is a bully that can be overcome.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 21w
back in october i made my first post about my specific type of ocd, how it mixes in with my day to day and how i “deal” with it. i talked about the starting point, how it gradually got worse, and then how it was going just a few months ago. i always think it’s insane how much can change in just the course of a small to a large amount of time. right now, i honestly feel like garbage. to be quite sincere i really want to give up, i’m barely holding on by a thread. and if i cut that thread, i really doubt anyone would care. i’ve never considered myself to be a suicidal person, and i still don’t consider myself that right now. it just gets to a point where it’s just, a lot to deal with. i don’t really enjoy things a lot nowadays. sure i have good days like everyone does, like today, when i was just enjoying my day without worries. but then it all comes crawling back twice as bad the following days. i take online college so i’m usually just stuck at home most of the time. but, when i do decide to actually go out and leave my house, my ocd just explodes because i have this whole routine i need to do or else i feel like i’ll contaminate wherever i end up going. i’m not going to go really deep into my compulsions because it’s hard enough to live with them, much more having to type them all out in detail. but when i go out my compulsions go from wiping down all my stuff i’m going to use after showering, to washing my clothes/cleaning the washer + dryer. i also have separate things (or two of the same thing) i use specifically in my house, and items i use when going out. such as shampoo/body wash, deodorant, lotion, hair curler, etc. as if that’s not draining enough, i also feel the need to fast a couple days prior to any plan i make because i’ve forced myself to believe i need to feel empty in order to be clean. i’m not sure if that’s my past eating disorder talking, or my ocd, but my brain can’t help but think any food in my house is utterly and completely contaminated. i’m so tired of this feeling, feeling like nothing will ever be clean again. feeling like my ocd is trapped in my childhood home. feeling that wave of diseases rushing through my veins the moment i step foot into what’s supposed to be “home”. and i’m so scared of therapy because what if i do get healed, and then everything comes rushing back the second i step into my room. i’m planning on moving somewhere far from my current house in this next coming year, so sometimes i feel like just waiting it out. but it’s insufferable when going to hangout with someone. i miss my friends, my family, and my partner. it’s crazy to me that i’m dealing with all this at the young age of 18 but, i’m sure lots of people have it way worse. i just want to find a way out, any possible way. but i keep pushing myself deeper and deeper that when i finally find a way, it will no longer exist.
- Date posted
- 19w
So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.
- Date posted
- 19w
I started dealing with OCD when I became fixated on health issues, particularly the fear of contracting a life-threatening disease. If I experienced any kind of medical symptom, no matter how small, that even remotely hinted at something potentially fatal, it would drive me crazy, and I couldn’t stop obsessing over it. Then one day, I started having intrusive thoughts about accidentally hitting someone with my car, and I would end up driving in circles to check if I had. Eventually, I found myself overwhelmed by a flood of new obsessive thoughts and compulsions. One day, while I was at the park, a squirrel came near me, and for some reason, I felt like it attacked me. I Googled it and learned that squirrels could carry rabies, which spiraled me into a deep fear of rabies. I became consumed with the thought I received a bite from a squirrel, raccoon, or bat any time I’m in areas that trigger me. It started off only being inside then transferred to even being in my own home. This made me obsess over every physical sensation in my body, compulsively checking to make sure nothing was wrong. One compulsion that I hated the most would to be putting rubbing alcohol on me to make sure that I had no open wounds. Every day feels like I’m walking around in a fog of anxiety, constantly worrying that I won’t even make it to old age. Sometimes, it gets so overwhelming that I just want it all to end. It stresses me so bad at times to where my brain feels like I’ve been studying all day.
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