Does anyone have any tips for recognizing when contamination worries are becoming obsessive vs. when it’s a typical reaction to the current pandemic situation? I don’t really have contamination fears but I find myself really worrying about any interactions I’ve had when I go out somewhere now. For example I went out to pick up an item yesterday (with a mask and everyone around me had a mask of course) but the woman helping me at the store was definitely closer than she should’ve been (she was also wearing a mask) so now I have a small worry she could’ve passed COVID onto me. I’m not asking for reassurance that I don’t have it, because obviously no one can tell me for certain, but I would just like to know how this sounds to anyone who experiences a similar dilemma.

I've never had COVID until now. I've tried so hard to avoid it. My family all got it first and I have a baby. We stayed away from the others as much as possible, even had my husband and other kid stay somewhere else, but it was too late and the baby got it and I had to take him to the ER for a 106 fever, and then I got sick from him and I am very sick, and I know the virus is everywhere in, on, and around me, and I don't know how I will ever survive knowing I can't possibly get rid of it from everything. I had to go to the ER for heart symptoms from my illness and they did lots of tests but I'm just very sick. I bet my anxiety was giving me heart palpitations. This really feels like my worst nightmare. Even after I'm better, how can I disinfectant every single thing, the carpets, my baby's stuff, so I'm not worried about infecting other people or even about just having the virus on me? I know it can't make me sick again but it's the contamination that kills me.

Does anyone have harm OCD related to recent events? Like events that just happened or happened not long ago? I feel like my OCD is trying to find something bad/immoral I could have done in nearly every situation that I am experiencing, for example “Did you just do that?”. And I constantly want to check, ask people for reassurance, try to find a logic answer by going it though in my head,… It’s many different themes but all related to doing sth bad/immoral (e.g., touching someone inappropriately, pushing someone in front of a vehicle, putting something in a drink/food). Does anyone have the same? Or the other thing that I experienced recently is that I did something (a rather unimportant action, not harming anyone) and I go over and over it and ask myself “why did you do that? What does that say about you? Are you actually a weird person?” It feels like I draw “false conclusions” from a real event… I don’t know if that’s OCD though or not. Just wondering if anyone has experienced the same. Good luck to you all! We’re not alone in this! 😊

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.