I feel like I won't be able to make any progress bc I live with people who don't respect my rules. I worry about how clean surfaces are but the people I live with ignore me when I ask that certain things don't touch each other. For example, if something touches the floor I can't touch it or anything else it has touched. This causes a problem bc even if I could disinfect the object and surface it has touched I can't force someone to wash their hands and constantly watch over them to make sure they are what I determine to be clean. Their hands which I think are dirty touch other surfaces some of which I can't clean to my standard and only continue to ruin all the work I spent making something sanitary.

It’s the other way around. You won’t be able to make any progress if you or them keep following those rules. In order to progress, you have to start doing some exposures, like leaving something “dirty”, or not washing your hands after you touch something that you consider infected or dirty. If you keep washing and sterilizing everything, you’re just falling in the never ending ocd cycle. It’s hard, trust me, I know, but it’s worth it. Start with something small, sit with the anxiety, and then move on. The anxiety will eventually go away.

me too ???

The thing with ocd, is that it is never satisfied, maybe for a while you’ll be ok, considering you’re not gonna live with them forever, but what happens when you move out, or have a house for yourself, ocd is gonna find out a way to mess with you, sadly it always does. Besides, we can’t always control the people around us, something’s gonna trigger us eventually, that’s why we need to fight. I don’t know how old you are, or how long you’ve been dealing with ocd, I’ve had it for more than 20 years, and just found out about exposure therapy a couple of months ago, and I’ve been able to have some “ocd free” weeks for the first time in a long long time. I’ll be lying if I tell you that it has been easy, cause it is not easy at all, and some days I can’t deal with the anxiety and I end up doing my compulsions. This last couple of days have been really hard, and only because I keep feeding this ocd monster by giving into my fears and doing compulsions. Ocd is the worst. ?

Right now I'm able to cope with not washing my hands or cleaning for a while and touch mostly everything that bothers me as long as it doesn't interfere with the few things I absolutely need to keep clean. The main thing that bothers me is the chance of anything touching what I want to keep clean. I feel like as long as I can prevent that from happening I'll be ok considering I don't have to live with these people for much longer but that's also hard to do and considering they aren't very supportive is probably annoying to them. I don't know if it's worth it to cause myself so much anxiety for only having to deal with this problem for a short amount of time

Thank you for your advice I hope all goes well for you in the future?