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My partner had a big spiral last night his foot became contaminated so he didn’t want to put it on the bed. We spoke for a bit then he decided he would just try and go to sleep. Now this morning he won’t eat or get up he believes the whole bed is now contaminated I’ve tried convincing him to do his meditation/breathing exercises and use some of the apps that have been helping him, but he’s just completely shutting down. I feel like anything that helps him he doesn’t want. I hate it when he won’t eat or drink. But he says it’s a punishment for how stupid he is. Does anyone have any advice? Has anyone gone through stages like this? What did you do? What do I do?

Everyday I’m faced with different issues. I live in another state, but had to come home for a loss in the family. With dealing with the loss, now I’m having to deal with overworking after getting off work (WFH) to ensure my mother’s home remains clear of bed bugs left over from visiting family members that keep coming over to check on us. WTFFF! I’m exhausted when I get off work and these SAME family members’ keep showing up. Mom has politely talked to them about it by which they all started blaming the other and being in denial about the bugs being in their room, but instead in another member’s room (it’s a family of 9 people living in a 4 bedroom house). They have had these bed bugs for YEARSSSSS and that’s why I stopped visiting them. Whenever I did visit it wasn’t long at all and I stood up the entire time even after they constantly offer me a seat. We’ve told them about the bugs twice and it’s like they’re just disregarding what we are saying. They show up with their purses sitting all over the couch. Moving from the couch to the dining room table chairs just honestly all over the house. I feel sorry for them, but tired of having to keep steam cleaning every day they come over. I’ve offered to help them clean their place and they say okay, but never tell me when to come. How are they constantly getting bit by bugs and it’s not effecting? Is it possible to become immune to their bites? Well this is my mom’s home and I’m doing the best to keep it clean while I’m here, but the countdown is on until I go back home. If she don’t put her foot down and not worry about their feelings her house is going to be full infested like theirs. How would you handle this situation?

I used to have this app a long time ago, but deleted it for some reason I couldn't remember. Just tonight, after changing my phone case, I had a breakdown. I remember rubbing my eye while I was scrolling on Facebook, and now my brain believes that the dirt—which came from my eye—are now underneath the case. It may only be a shallow thing for most, but how it itches my brain to give into my compulsion of cleaning it again. It's difficult to explain to people why I would cry over a piece of dirt. Not everyone could or would try enough to understand what OCD really is, unless they're going through it themselves. I drink medications, but I sometimes think it's not doing its magic tricks anymore. I'm just incredibly sad that my symptoms are appearing once again, and I thought I'd share this to all of you who truly understands. If you've read all the way here, thank you. I wish I could hug you all. 🫂🧡

I've been struggling about OCD for a long time and I've only been made aware of it now. It's the cause of all my worrying, compulsions, and all the times I feel unpeaceful. When I first learnt about it I felt really relieved. My kind of "obsession" are intrusive thoughts that contradict my faith and values. I've spent years fighting these thoughts and doing compulsions of seeking reassurance from verses or praying and such or saying "no I don't!!" when they happen. I try to ignore them anduse cognitive defusion but sometimes it just breaks my peace. Another obsession I have is having images in my head about touching dirty things like the rust in my bathroom. A compulsions I have regarding that is imagining myself being anywhere BUT the bathroom but it doesn't stop. Now that I know, I'll try and find a way to heal, and figure it out with myself and God (because I can't rely on my parents, they're not the open-minded kind regarding mental health)

Here’s what happened! I saw a tiny kitten on the street, probably around two weeks old. He came near my foot, crying, “meow, meow.” I’m not used to adopting pets and with my contamination OCD, it’s hard for me to touch animals. But this baby kitten looked so helpless and its eyes seemed infected, it couldn’t see properly. I took it to the vet, got the prescribed medicines and brought it home. Now, it’s staying with me. I wash my hands every time after touching it or giving it medicine or foods. I’m absolutely loving this little baby kitten! But it's been 2days I'm washing my hands too much that they hurt!

Looking for help coping with contamination OCD, bugs, and water damage. Bugs in my home are my number one trigger, and I am living in a historic (75 year old) house for the first time with a shitty landlord who does not carry out repairs in a timely manner. We had a really big leak from a broken toilet in the house recently (inches of standing water both upstairs and downstairs) and maintenance didn't get here for a whole day. Cleaning up the water by myself and dealing with all the accompanying thoughts and worries was incredibly taxing. They cut holes in ceiling downstairs and put in a giant dehumidifier, which for a couple days, made the house (and my brain) feel SO much better. But the dehumidifiers generate so much heat that I think we're honestly worse off now. I have also begun finding smokey brown cockroach nymphs in the house, including two today. Cockroaches are my number one most feared bug. I am really scared to find bugs in my home because that tells me that my home is unsafe and I cannot relax there. I check every room many times in a specific manner to see if there are bugs. I am bound to find something with how excessively I am checking. I do not want to see a bug in my house at all, but in a kind of twisted, subconcious way, I *do* want to see a bug, because it would confirm my fears and anxieties and validate my obsessions and compulsions. I am just so tired, and I feel hopeless. I do not know how to relax. No amount of weed or drinking or sleep can quell the way I feel. I can't afford ERP or anything specific but I am on a few waitlists. I wish I could be someone that understands roaches and bugs are an inevitable part of life, and I wish they did not cause such a visceral reaction for me. It does not help that my roommates are not home often and do not see these things as a very big deal. They are very go with the flow, whatever happens happens kind of people, and it frustrates me. Thank you for reading this.

I have emetophobia. And have been battling with it for about a year and a half now. It stems from a trip I took with my high school where everyone ended up getting the stomach bug. I didnt have it so bad but I ended up feeling nauseous the entire trip (1 week long). And then every time I would eat food I would feel nauseous or unwell and had a strict clean diet for a while. It got to the point where I couldn’t attend school without feeling like I was going to vomit and pass out. I couldn’t even hear the word without getting anxious. I eventually got on lexapro and when that didnt work then I recently got on prozac. I have been talking to my therapist about my anxiety and she had initially thought it was a trauma response from the trip, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was a form of OCD. Like it was where I wouldnt eat something if it touched the counter or I wouldnt eat something unless someone else ate the exact thing a few hours before. I avoid red meat completely because it is slightly raw. I get panic attacks after eating something like a freaking cookie from Crumbl, because I would read reviews about someone getting sick from the uncooked dough. But it felt like before summer I was getting to a point where I could eat most things and not get too much anxiety. Until the other day. On my birthday at midnight I ended up getting sick like stomach flu sick like real bad and ended up in the er. I havent eaten anything since and am horrified to eat something. And my thoughts keep running and I dont know how to be normal anymore. I dont know how to have a relationship with food anymore. I am horrified. I spent the entire year just dreading this one day and it happened on my birthday. I am supposed to be in school but I don’t know how to function anymore. Please someone help, I feel so alone.

Last month I bought a wax melter to plug into my wall because I wanted to enjoy nice things in my empty apartment. After a couple days of having it and using it, one night out of no where I experienced a severe allergic reaction that hit super fast. My throat was itchy and my eyes burned the area under my eyes were puffy. I immediately turned it off and unplugged it and never used it again. Here’s where my OCD took over. A few years ago I moved into an apartment that ended up having bedbugs. I spent a week there and it totally ruined my mental health. I threw out half of what I owned and from the stuff I still had I found out I had some bugs living in my items. I found this out when I moved into an apartment new apartment and found a couple crawling out of my gaming console. I immediately bagged everything up and notified my apartment complex. They had my unit treated and I haven’t seen one since. I haven’t had any furniture in my room and just had trash bags with my belongings sitting in the kitchenette area. Ive lived like this for the last two years and haven’t done anything about because thinking about it makes me spiral and stresses me out. I’ve had episodes where I think I might’ve accidentally torn a bag open and they got out. So I spray 99% alcohol everywhere religiously. I have since taped up the items so they are more secure, and I planned on opening them after a certain amount of time where I was certain they were dead. Another precaution I took was using a powder called Cimexa. This is where the wax melter story becomes relevant. In one of my episodic freak outs, I I dusted the dust into the space around light switches and receptacles in my apartment. This was sometime ago and I can’t remember when exactly I did this, but I know it’s been a while. Fast forward to after I unplugged my wax melter, I’m already stressed about my taped up boxes because I wanted to move on from living in fear and open them or throw them out, whichever one I could muster the mental strength to do. While getting up for work early one morning, I was groggy and thinking about why I was allergic to the wax from the wax melter, when I get hit with an intrusive thought about how maybe the wax melter got too hot and could’ve started a fire because of the dust I had sprayed into the receptacles. After I thought that, I was panicking, freaking out. The only thing that calmed me down was prayer and I was able to go to work. I mentioned it to a coworker whose spouse is a therapist and he mentioned that I’m just fixating on something that hasn’t happened in the time since and probably won’t happen. I tried to come to terms with it just being an intrusive thought when it evolved just a week ago into “well what if that powder around the receptacles is being blown by the AC into my apartment?” Because lately I’ve been feeling a slight allergic reaction to something at home and I don’t know what it could be. I still have the wax melter but it just sits on a table in my room and I haven’t used it since maybe three weeks ago when this started. I think logically it has to be the wax melter maybe, because why would it be the dust if I haven’t experienced anything like this until now? But I’m also freaked out because what if it’s spread to other units around me? I don’t know what to do.

i suffer from severe contamination ocd and I'm starting to think i will never be "normal" again I have already done 20 sessions of ERP I've also tried 6 different medications so far The medication and ERP have so far reduced my OCD by 25-35% but i remain very limited and far from "normal". have any of you who also suffered from severe contamination/disgust OCD managed to recover fully and have a normal life? is it even possible for someone like me to ever have a normal life again after 7+ years of severe contamination OCD?

i’m so stressed about college. i’m SO worried about meeting people, talking to people, making friends, meeting my roommates, etc. i’m scared that they won’t like me. i’m scared that i’ll say/do something that i couldn’t control and then they all hate me. i’ve been so on edge with my ocd lately, and it’s not very out of the ordinary to have me wanna do something like. weird. but it’s also just like…anything can happen. that little “your chances may be low, but they’re never zero” is always in the back of my head and it stresses me OUT. “the chances of you doing some weird and crazy thing or something out of pocket to your new roommates are very low, but never zero” like that TERRIFIES me dude. idk what to do. on top of it, im scared that they might accidentally do something and contaminate me or my surroundings or anything and then there’s nothing i can do about it. im always VERY particular with keeping things clean, with who can touch them, etc etc, but what if they do something behind my back? or what if they don’t but i think that they did and im stuck instead my head for the next like day or so? i’m so scared. i dont know what to do. does anybody have any college experiences they can share to help me?

I have had such a long struggle with OCD and I have doing good for a long time but it is really coming in full force right now. I’m losing weight because I’m having a really hard time eating. I ate yesterday and then my stomach was hurting. I just convince myself that everything is contaminated or now that I’m not eating much that it’s gonna make me sick because my body isn’t used to it. Idk I’m struggling so bad. I’ve had some snacks here and there but it’s so hard for me to eat right now and It’s making me sad because I was doing so good for a long time. I also keep forgetting to take my meds and I know that’s part of it.

I have had OCD my whole life and was diagnosed by a therapist 2 years ago. Specifically I struggle a lot with health, contamination and pure ocd. I was doing exposures and really felt like I conquered by contamination ocd. With the health ocd I have an intense fear I will have a food or medicine allergy and go into anaphylactic shock. This takes up a lot of my energy day to day. Within the past year, we bought a home, renovated and recently got married. My husband wants to start trying for a baby soon but I am not ready at all because of how much I feel like I have gone backwards with my anxiety and ocd. This spiked a lot with the stress of wedding planning. I’m scared pregnancy will spike my health/contamination ocd even more and I won’t be able to handle it. I always wanted babies but now that it’s getting closer and I know how much ocd I truly have I am so nervous I will cause myself and baby more stress than good. Does anyone have positive stories of TTC/pregnancy/PP and motherhood with ocd?

i am 18 years old and a couppe days ago i posted about the state of my house (cat pee, cat throw up, grime, dirt, etc everywhere), and how my parents dont clean/are used to living this way. im trying to clean the kitchen, i was cleaning it and cleaned majority of the counters, the stove, the dishwasher, now my clothes have a faint cat pee smell, the house is basically drenched in cat pee. i feel stuck and really isolated, i hate living here but at the same time, its my fault too for not cleaning. it is just hard for me to clean, i dont know why, and the house has been this way since 2023-2024 or so. idk what to do and i feel so alone, i wish my mom would help. idk what my girlfriend would think if she knew the state of my house

i finally moved in to my dorm and im with my dormmates rn, earlier i touched the string that my mom used to tie my bed foam and i feel like its from our house. i have a really bad contamination ocd especially to my own body fluid (semen), i used to touched things while my hand is contaminated with it back then and i feel like my family also touched those so i feel like everything in our house is contaminated with it. i want to move to my dorm without that feeling and sanitized all my things before going, but after that tie my mom used and touched i feel like my whole things and body is contaminated rn and i feel really really dirty and idk what to do

Red and bloody from the soap and water I have been putting on for 8 hours each day.

Hi everyone, I’ve been spending more and more time at the gym and with that means I’ve been spending more time disinfecting and washing my hands. There are certain numbers I try to “hit” when carrying out tasks like the number 4. When washing my hands I will pump the soap 4 times. But then I think about how the running water + paper towel used adds on +2 pts and so I end up at 6 but I don’t like the number 6. So to combat this I will do 4 steps of 4 actions because I don’t like numbers in relation to 3,6, or 9 ( bc of course washing, rinsing, drying 3 times would not be adequate in my mind). But I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll mess up a sequence of what I’m doing and then try to combat the compulsion I feel in the moment and try to forget the number of actions I’ve just carried out. In my mind doing something “♾️” times is better than knowing I for sure didn’t do enough. (In cases like these I equate ♾️ to an undefined/ unknown #). It’s gotten to the point where I feel like I’m wasting so many resources and a lot of my time too but I still struggle to stop until I feel like everything is fine again. I spray my sanitizer spray 4 times on a paper towel and tell myself that 4 sprays + 1 paper towel is okay because at least 4x1 =4 and 4+1 =5 but it really just drives me mad but because 4-1 =3 I have to combat that with wiping an adequate amount of times.

Hello, I’m a mother. My son is 17 and he has contamination OCD. We have been trying different ways to support him but he refused to see any therapist. He is struggling with paranoia and intrusive thoughts. Those thoughts make him so angry that he get yelly, throwing and breaking some furniture, and just yesterday he put a hole in the wall. He admitted that these didn’t help him feel any better, in fact it made him feel worse (because he didn’t want to act as such). We are doing our best to support him, talking with him but he refused to talk about those intrusive thoughts and paranoia. What do you suggest me to do? What would be helpful for me to do so he can talk with me more? We desperately want him to get help but he wouldn’t. Thank you in advance!

my roommates are great people and very supportive, but they don’t understand ocd. they try to fix me by telling me things i’ve heard a million times before, and by doing things that actively trigger me as a kind of exposure therapy. i’m very particular about contaminants in my water, but i have a specific aversion to tap water, which is why i have my own water dispenser. every few weeks, i fill jugs with filtered water and keep them upstairs so others can use them too. after getting home from work, i filled my cup with ice water and, for once, didn’t inspect it like i normally would. i drank it down. when i went for a refill, the ice had melted a bit and i noticed particulates floating in the water, instantly recognizable as calcium and other minerals from our tap. i don’t explode when i’m triggered. instead, i shut down. the anxiety starts to crawl in. i felt myself spiraling while i pulled out the jug. i know it sounds stupid, but i swear there’s a real difference in smell between filtered and tap water. i checked it, sniffed it, and confirmed what i already felt. and once that thought was in my head, it took hold. i felt disgusting. i wanted to make myself puke. i couldn’t tell if it was anxiety or the water itself, but it felt like something was burning a hole in my stomach. i sent a message in our group chat asking about it, and one of my roommates said they had done it to prove i wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. they said water is water, so i shouldn’t care. i know they meant well. but when people who don’t fully understand ocd try to force those kinds of steps on you, it sticks. it reminds me of my parents. they do things like this a lot, pushing back against my compulsions, trying to help by challenging them. and sometimes, i do appreciate that. but this felt like too much. it crossed a line. and i just needed to rant.

So I’m severely emetophobic but these past few weeks have gotten SO bad. I had a bad reaction to an SSRI that made me feel like I was gonna throwup, I stopped taking them over two weeks ago but ever since then the fear has got even worse. I haven’t left the house properly in weeks because I’ve convinced myself I’ll be sick. I feel nauseous even indoors a lot of the time (there are hours when I don’t, like for example this afternoon I was fine). But I challenged myself to go for a short walk this evening and omg it was so hard I really thought I might throwup. The thing is I KNOW it’s anxiety and not real nausea because it feels completely different to when I was actually nauseous from the medication. This feeling is more like a tight throat/sensation of a lump in my throat that makes me feel like I’m gonna gag. I also have RCPD (I can’t burp basically lol) so I just feel like I have trapped air in my throat that’s gonna make me puke. The phobia has gotten really really bad. I have started therapy recently but I’ve been scared of throwing up since I was a kid and I’m now 31 lol wtf. I remember last Christmas my mum said someone at her work had been sick and I was so scared my mum had caught it and would pass it on to me that I refused to leave my bedroom without wearing gloves and a mask and wiping everything with anti-germ wipes. But right now it’s so so bad because I have literally gotten to the point where I’ve convinced myself I feel nauseous pretty much 24/7 and I am taking anti-nausea meds almost every day. Has anyone else dealt with/has tips for this??? I’m literally desperate 😭

My mom is visiting me and we have been sharing my studio apartment for about 10 days. I was already struggling with this because I have a hard time sharing my space with people—I like things to be clean and orderly and I hate not having total control over these things. She got sick with what we thought was a cold and I was getting very stressed/irritated with her coughing and sneezing in the apartment, even though I obviously know that it’s not her fault. Her illness got progressively worse (probably the flu), so she decided to get a hotel for her last night. I am alone in my apartment, which I am grateful for, and I cleaned everything down with Lysol, but I still feel as though my apartment is contaminated and I just feel grossed out and stressed. I felt fine earlier before I realized it is most likely the flu, but now I am starting to feel congested and I can’t tell whether it is real or just my paranoia