My grandparents living room ceiling had a leak and broke through seven years ago. They had asbestos in the ceiling and a special company had to come and repair the hole. There was some large statues in their home next to the debris. My grandparents died of natural causes two years later. My parents took the statues into their home and they have been there for five years. I walked past one today and bumped into it. My ocd is telling me I now have asbestos on me and I’m going to die. Although it thinks it’s immediately I know this would occur for a number of years. The anxiety is very intense, but I am sitting with it and trying not to respond. Does anyone else have these same worries about asbestos? Please don’t post any reassurance. I would appreciate a general consensus of the same fear. Worrying about asbestos has really destroyed my life for eleven years and I’m trying to go against it to recover but man it’s difficult especially without meds.

Contamination OCD

Khoables

Date posted: 3y

I have the same fear about asbestos. I live in a house where it contains popcorn ceilings and I was afraid that it contained asbestos. I kept getting obsessed with searching for answers and when asbestos became phased out. My house was built in 2009 and deep down in my gut I knew that asbestos was long gone before the build date, but I didn’t believe myself and continued to worry. I asked countless people on Quora about this and all the said it was very unlikely that the popcorn ceiling had asbestos since it was phased out long ago. But of course because of researching I doubted these answers and remembered that some houses had asbestos in the ceilings as early as the year 2000. Though in general it is unlikely to see asbestos as far as 2000 let alone my house which was built 9 years later it still left uncertainty.

jhadro

Date posted: 2y

Hi! I have this same fear. How are you doing now?

Khoables

Date posted: 2y

@jhadro I’ve been doing better. After countless times of emailing and asking Quora, I realized my house probably does not have asbestos. Although I had trouble realizing that I shouldn’t worry, I kind of just learned to let the fear pass right through me. The thought comes up so much that I kind of treat it as something not worth wasting my time with. With other people’s houses, I’ve been learning to be realistic with my fear, such as how truly likely it is to touch the ceiling if I’m sitting and just raising my arms up.

Khoables

Date posted: 2y

@Khoables With the stress and worry, every time I’m in a situation that triggers me, I try to just not let the stress get to me as it’s very uncomfortable 😣

jhadro

Date posted: 2y

@Khoables Hi! I have a really hard time going to houses or businesses that are old. I always what to know if any remodeling has been done recently because I'm worried asbestos could be in the air or in the carpet, etc. It's exhausting.

Marko62293

Date posted: 1y

@jhadro How are you now? I also worry about old buildings. I love history and want to visit Buckingham palace and Henry the viii palace but they are full of asbestos 😩 I don’t know how to do exposures around these things without going completely coco 😁

jhadro

Date posted: 2y

Hi! I have the same fear and understand completely. How are you doing now?

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