Contamination anxiety playing up at the moment. My brother who is living with us at the moment refuses to brush his teeth, wash himself/his hair or change his clothes. He doesn’t take hand sanitiser out with him, he’s been meeting friends without a mask and he only washes his clothes like 1 every 8 weeks. To be frank he does not smell good. It makes me so anxious, it makes me not want to be around him and it makes the rest of my family irritated too. We’ve tried talking to him but he says that it is our problem and that we should just get over ourselves, and that society is what makes us want to wash. I can’t tell whether my ocd and anxiety is being unreasonable or whether I am justified in my ill feeling. Not sure. Has anyone else got experience with this?

contamination ocd has really been messing with me the last couple of days. usually i only struggle when i can connect something to possibly throwing up, but this time it doesn’t matter. so earlier, i took a shower and i also use a wash cloth to wash my body. after i showered i cleaned up my dirty clothes and towels. then when i came back to grab my phone, there was a soap speck on my phone so without thinking i just wiped it on the back of my crewneck i was wearing. well that then spiraled into me thinking what if the soap was from my dirty wash cloth. i know most of you are probably thinking it’s clean since you use soap to clean ur body. well i clean every inch of my body, including my bottom so that’s where my anxiety is gravitating towards. this sounds so ridiculous saying it out loud, but i just have so much anxiety over it. i tried my hardest not to change but i did. at first i just changed my crewneck, but then i had to change my shorts cause my crewneck touches my shorts. but then i changed my shorts. and now i feel like my shirt is contaminated cause i was wearing it with my other shorts before changing. moral of the story, i just have so much anxiety over it and i feel like i shouldn’t because it’s really not a big deal. and i don’t want to change again because that seems ridiculous to me. plus now i’m connecting the contamination to my bed since i was laying on my bed before i changed. i hate life, this sucks.

Hi all, I’m new here and just recently got diagnosed. I’m trying to make sense of a lot of things and could use some perspective. I feel like I’m the only one who has contamination themes and does not have the compulsion to clean things, but rather to run away from the mess. I would really love to hear from someone who can relate, because right now I feel like I’m making it up. Details which might either be useful or triggering: My kitchen is the best example. I might leave a dish or two in the sink and say “I’ll clean it up soon, it’s no big deal.” But then—because of a combination of factors—it will probably sit there for a couple days. Around day 2 or 3 I develop an aversion to dealing with it. It gives me ick. And the longer it sits, the ickier it becomes—realistically and in my imagination. And because I’ve stopped doing dishes, they really start to pile up, and each day, getting started feels like more work and more confrontation with disgust. I will start thinking about how I need to do dishes, or take out the trash, and then get hit with a horrifying mental image of bugs (I’ll spare you the details) or other really disgusting things happening. That image brings me shame and makes me scared to deal with the mess. When it really piles up, I start getting images of the nastiest hoarders’ houses I’ve ever seen, and I start catastrophizing about the future I’m doomed for. So mostly I just watch tv to get my mind off it. (I swear I’m not just lazy 😔) This is true for food too. I will be unsure if something in my fridge is a little too old, so I decided to hedge my bets and I avoid it. I let a lot of food go to waste this way. The biggest problem here is I don’t throw it away when I decide it’s bad. I just side-eye it. Maybe because I know it’s silly to decide 6-day-old soy milk that smells fine has a “bad vibe,” and I think I may be able to get over it later. But then the food actually spoils and I don’t want to touch it to throw it out. I actually had a week or so in June where I couldn’t open the fridge because it smelled bad. It took every ounce of emotional energy and an external deadline to force me to clean my kitchen. I had a couple of meltdowns but it felt great to get my space back. Of course, it’s a cycle and it got bad again. The crazy thing is, I love to cook and I even like doing dishes. And I do dishes every day at work, no problem! But I’m spending so much money on takeout because my kitchen is always trashed. :( Is this super crazy? Does it even sound like contamination ocd? Am I alone in this? Any feedback would be helpful.

Everything is filthy and it’s because of me. So I’ve(16m)been kind of getting better at handling my cocd but recently I was in bed and had a ‘physical reaction’ I won’t delve deeper into that and my fear revolves around bodily fluids so this is obviously something that would trigger it but I tried to just sit with it and just told myself ‘ok I’ll just washed my covers then’ and I take the covers off and to my horror my mattress is discolored and idk why I use a protector on it but I guess only a few years ago. There’s like discoloration on the top and yellow discoloration on the side and the side that touches the wall has black discoloration and I’m just so disgusted. But I go wash my covers and then my mind just wanders to the fact that my little cousins are coming over for my brothers birthday and I panicked I need to clean and that’s when what happened earlier really bothers me I basically just turned my room into a biohazard I look and my mattress is like touching 2 things those things are infected now according to my brain and I panick now the whole room is dangerous my dirty clothes that fell on the floor now the floor is ruined. So Im now slowly cleaning over the past few days and its not helping im just freaking out more and on top of my room the bathroom is dirty and idk how to clean it I mean IM guess im scared i won’t clean good enough because im the only one who will clean it even though 2 other people use it and dont clean it its dirty and it irks me so bad every time i use the shower I spray it with bleach and the floor around the shower but the bathroom counter is dirty and I need to clean it but idk if it’ll be enough. And I need to mop but every time i mop my feet still get dirty from just walking on the floor so i must be doing something right. Idk what to do im panicking everything is dirty idk what to do I need advice.