- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
Did you do ERP therapy with any of your therapist? I’ve struggled with severe contamination ocd this past year and a combination of medication and ERP has helped me get on the right path. I would restrict fluids and used to avoid going to the bathroom out of fear of contamination and not wanting to do hand washing rituals. I would only go the bathroom twice a day, when I wake up and before bed right before I shower. Then I couldn’t sit in any of my seats or in my bed out of fear of spreading contamination. It’s a work in progress but I can definitely see a lot of improvement am now able to go to the bathroom throughout the day and am a lot less anxious as a whole. Stay strong I know you can get through this! ❤️
- Date posted
- 4y
Have you tried ERP? It was a major part of my severe contamination recovery.
- Date posted
- 4y
I have tried ERP twice nothing helps me. I can sit with the anxiety. It is too strong. Medicine is not helping either.
- Date posted
- 4y
Something that helped me is trying to give up the control of trying to not be anxious and just accepting that I am if that makes sense. Keep doing the things that bother you and eventually it’s easier to see there is no real threat and it won’t bother you as much. It’s just your brain telling you that you have to do things or can’t do things so you won’t be anxious. Are you worried about the germs doing something or is it more of a disgust avoidance factor? I wish you the best. Keep fighting! I would talk to someone about seeing other options for medication and to someone that is really trained and has experience with ocd if your other therapist haven’t helped you much.
- Date posted
- 4y
Thank you. I fear getting my family sick if I slip up amd don't clean or disinfect. Unfortunately, the last two therapists were recommended by the IOCDF and yet they didnt help me. It feel so hopeless. I have tried so hard to recover and it keeps spiraling out of control.
- Date posted
- 4y
I’ve had that fear as well. It can be discouraging when it stars to spiral out of control but try to hang in there for your child. I don’t know it this will help but I try to think that there are toilet germs in most public places that are out of my control and they never harm anyone. If you are worry about bathroom germs they are minimally toxic and you would have to ingest a whole lot to make you sick. Ocd is going to fight the logic and instill fear in anyway it can but trying to not listen and give in. It eventually helps. Your own bathroom germs won’t hurt your child if you aren’t constantly disinfecting and giving into the rituals. Cleaning a normal amount is more than enough. There are people that rarely clean and nothing happens to them. Your son has an immune system that will fight germs from harming him. The fact that it is causing you distress proves you would never purposefully harm him. You are a good mother. Know that fighting the ocd and fighting the rituals will help your son in the end because he will have a mom that is there for him and doesn’t worry about ocd controlling her life. I hope you can find a good therapist that will help you. I know it’s hard once you start to feel hopeless but I promise it gets better with time.
- Date posted
- 4y
I worry about my child so much...I don't want him to get sick. It pains me so much if I don't follow through with the rituals, because I feel as though I would be purposely harming him. I try my hardest to be the best mother I can be. It is so hard.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w
Never feels like I can fully put my mind to rest. The problem with OCD for me is once I'm over one worry there's another buried deep into my mind that I'm not fully over. The two events I'm not completely over is when I tried to help a 17 year old with POCD when I was 19 and the topics unfortunately were detailed and even then I explained to them I wasn't comfortable with talking to them. I guess I just had a hard time saying no to someone needing help but it eventually made me so uncomfortable that I stopped talking with them altogether at some point. Then the other thing is being so worried that I committed a crime because my elbow touched someone's behind when I didn't want that to happen at all. I didn't want to listen to my OCD by saying move my arm or something horrible is going to happen so I didn't and then something bad actually did happen. I thought it would just be a light touch while zipping a bag up but then it was worse than I ever wanted it to be and it was so awkward and I hated it. I feel like I just won't be able to get back to the way I was before OCD started all of this. Aside from that I've just had extreme health anxiety but am too afraid to reach out to a PCP even though I need to. Something deep down is telling me I should do this but I'm just so anxious and embarrassed about sharing things to them. I can't even enjoy the things I used to do because this is constantly just messing up my life. I'm hoping I get a start of positivity next time I see my therapist. This just sucks. Feels like others around me are doing so much better than I am and I'm just kind of stuck on these same problems and feeling absolute shame and guilt from the past over and over again. I'm just so sick of dealing with this every single day so I just use escape whenever I can. Even that doesn't really work. I just wish I could go back in time.
- Date posted
- 18w
sorry this is super long i just wanna know if anyone else has been thru something similar bc i feel super alone 🩷 i have super bad contamination ocd. it was bad already but my house was like my safe space until a few months ago someone brought something into my house that i considered ‘contaminated’. and so then i felt like that part of the house was contaminated, then it spread to everything outside my room (since family is moving around touching stuff) and then somehow i got convinced everything in my room except my bed is contaminated and i need to wash my hands after touching it. in my mind its like the contamination just infinitely spreads to things after the tiniest bit of touch. idek what im afraid of anymore or even what the original thing was but i can’t let it go. when i have to wash off contamination i have to wash at least 4 times or until it feels right, or sometimes take rlly long showers and wipe down all my stuff. i even throw away food and clothes or just whole items sometimes because they feel so contaminated i don’t want them in my space. i can’t be super near people or have anyone touch me, and i also can’t bring anything new into my room since it had to go through the entry of my house which feels contaminated. i feel like all i do is lay in bed and then wash my hands and do compulsions so i can go eat or do other stuff around the house. also i never go out because i’m bc people outside make me feel dirty, and i hate thinking about how many people have touched stuff in stores or in public and stuff. so im just in my room worrying all day. i feel so trapped and the contamination/avoiding it is all i think about anymore i barely have time for anything else and im never present when i talk to people because im worrying about if i accidentally got contaminated. im starting erp next week and knowing that im going to have to expose myself to things is really freaking me out. does anyone else have this kind of ocd ? im exhaustedddd 🥲🥲💔
- Date posted
- 16w
I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…
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