What kind of ocd is this?

I might delete this later…so I’d been diagnosed with ocd years ago and have gone in and out of therapy and CBT, but until I signed up here I had no idea how many different types of ocd there are so I’m trying to understand what subtype my experiences might fall into and also find community support. One of the biggest obstacles I struggle with (especially after the pandemic and being stuck at home) is contamination of objects from room to room within my own home/car/outside, it feels like a real life game of operation or like when you have food on a plate and you don’t want it to mix together, I don’t want different things in my home to “mix” from room to room…and the contamination isn’t necessarily a germ it’s like this invisible nonsense I made up in my head, if things mix, then my anxiety/fears flair up and if I don’t clean the objects before the go back to their correct spots then that anxiety just stays with me until I do. A few real life examples would be, not wanting to put clothes back in the closet if I’ve worn them, until they are washed again (that’s a mild example), or if I touch the coffee pot to pour a cup of coffee I need to wash the hand that touched the pot before I can touch something in another room such as my laptop. These loops repeat daily and make everything 10x harder than it needs to be. I just want to live without keeping a map of everything in my head that can and can’t mix from room to room! It’s ruining me.

cyrene

Date posted: Yesterday

I would refer to this as contamination or germ OCD, which is a very common theme of OCD for a lot of folks. 🫶

workingonthings

Date posted: Yesterday

@cyrene Thank you for your reply, I was also wondering if it falls under magical thinking because the anxiety I get or things I think will happen if I don’t clean the object have nothing to do with getting sick or germs and mostly to do with something that isn’t physically or scientifically possible…and it’s like I understand that the things are totally unrelated so I wish I could just tell myself that it’s ok to take a mug from the kitchen into the bedroom, like to make a cup of tea before bed would be a dream but it requires so. many. steps. Like clean the mug, set the mug on a paper towel so it doesn’t touch the kitchen counter, make the tea, wash my hands before I can touch the mug, make sure hands and mug touch nothing else before taking it to my nightstand.

cyrene

Date posted: Yesterday

@workingonthings It definitely does, which I glazed over but honestly it really does boil down to what you (or a therapist) think is something you struggle with! I struggle with magical thinking a lot, and I realistically forget to mention it or tag it because it's something that sort of always runs in the background hahaha.

workingonthings

Date posted: Yesterday

@cyrene I see, yeah I will connect with a new therapist on here, it’s been years since I spoke to anyone and it was mainly talk therapy and cbt I was doing through a workbook they suggested, but we didn’t dive too deep into specific subtypes and I found that talk therapy didn’t really help with anything I was dealing with, and I guess it is up to me to put in that work I’d like to try the exposure one, erp?? But yeah just a big goal to get this more under control this year and found this app. I keep just pushing therapy out or kicking it down the road because it’s hard or I’m embarrassed, meanwhile symptoms start to stack up and I’m just tired. Thanks again for chatting. 💕

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