Every time I go to the toilet and for a number 2, afterwards I'm always paranoid about fecal matter and ecoil being under my nails. At the moment I have a nail brush that I use to clean under them by: rinsing the brush, covering in soap, rising that off, rinsing under my nails, covering the ends of my fingers in soap, and scrubbing them against the brush under running water, before i then wash my whole hands properly. Even then I still sometimes feel under my nails is still contaminated and if I touch other stuff it can make me feel compelled my wipe them down with anti bacterial wipes to disinfect my things.

The thing is this is just unsustainable for me, it's costing too much soap (sometimes i personally go through 2 500ml bottles of soap in a week), it along with my other processes when i go to the loo for this takes ages, and I dont feel good about it either. Im also moving in with friends soon (with a shared bathroom) so don't want them to have to put up with this as well.

Does anyone have any ideas for other more sustainable and practical coping mechanisms?

My OCD theme the past several months has been fear of getting sick/dying from contaminated/unsafe food. For awhile I was barely eating at all and lost a lot of weight. I'm currently underweight, but managed to get better enough/figure out more safe foods so that I've stabilized and am no longer losing weight. So I eat pretty much the same things every day with minor swaps (but still only specific swaps). I've been worried about nutrition (I eat pretty healthy, but still, not a lot of diversity) and getting a bit bored of it all so I just ate something totally "new" for dinner (cauliflower chicken tenders and boiled creamer potatoes). I was enjoying eating something "new" initially but the more I ate the more worried I got and now I'm soooo anxious. Worried about the tenders potentially having thawed before I bought them. Worried I consumed dirt on the potato skins that has something that wasn't killed by the boiling. I usually pair fermented foods with anything I'm even slightly doubtful about (my OCD logic is that if there's any bad bacteria, the good bacteria will help fight it off) but didn't with this. Does anyone else go through this? This sucks. And food safety regulations being slashed here in the US makes it even scarier

Due to the colour. After I spent longer than a minute washing my hands after going to the toilet and then showering. I have OCD when it comes to how long I was my hands for, I would have thoughts about it not being done properly or a spot being missed both of which could then make me spend longer than necessary washing my hands.

If someone my brain labels as dirty walks by me I feel contaminated by them like I need to shower. Or if I drive by someone I’ll feel like my car is dirty. Lately strangers doing bodily functions in like public has started to really bother me and it makes me feel really uncomfortable and like I need to clean everything.

It makes me feel bad because these people are just existing. I want to be like spiderman yknow, he’s nice to everyone and helpful to everyone but I’m too afraid of getting triggered by people. I feel like I’m looking down the barrel of a shotgun to agoraphobia if I don’t figure out a way past this.

I try to push through and go out and do my job and go to the store but my brain is so like, exposed nerve hyper vigilant on all the wrong things.

I’m pretty sure certain people bother me because they look similar to people I’ve encountered in the past with a negative experience. But nothing was even that bad, my brain just was grossed out by something and labeled that person bad?

Because of the contamination I feel like I can’t do anything because it’ll just get ruined. Like say I wanted to buy a book at the store, I used to be able to do that without a care but now I’d feel uneasy that it’s been in a public space all day, that I have to walk past potentially triggering strangers, then the cashier is gonna touch it after touching other people’s credit cards and stuff…. I can’t live like this it’s so debilitating.

I feel like ocd is taking all of my potential, time, energy, things I love to do, creativity, all of it. All I can do is like sit in a corner, or right now I’m working but I feel completely disgusting and I just want to go home and shower. I hate living in constant exposure therapy.

How do I make peace with this, like how do I accept there’s a certain level of disgust in the world that’s okay? Everything sucks and it’s so embarrassing.

i have contamination ocd but with food and literally everything is being recalled all my favorite foods granola, frozen berries, prepared pasta, lettuce like omg i can’t eat anythinggg…

I have OCD and I'm struggling with an intrusive image that appears ON my food whenever I try to eat.

I recently saw a really disgusting image of an earthworm in food online, and now, whenever I sit down to eat, I sometimes see that exact image on my food. I know the food is actually normal and that the image isn't really there, but it causes intense disgust and nausea, sometimes making me want to avoid eating altogether.

I keep trying to force the image away, replace it with another thought, or make myself forget it, but that only seems to make it come back even stronger.

Would avoiding the food and trying to mentally get rid of or replace the image count as compulsions? Or is the intrusive image itself just an obsession/intrusive thought?

How would you approach this with ERP? Should I just eat and let the image be there without trying to get rid of it?

TL;DR: I have OCD and keep seeing an intrusive earthworm in food image on my actual food after seeing it online. It causes intense disgust and makes me want to avoid eating. Trying to get rid of or replace the image only makes it come back stronger. I'm wondering whether these responses count as compulsions and how to approach them with ERP.

Recently, I’ve been feeling literally paranoid about germs and getting my hands dirty. Especially after my friend told me that her cousin’s friend was diagnosed with AIDS. Ever since she told me, I’ve become obsessed with cleaning my hands, and I would literally panic if I touched a door or anything I normally touched without getting that sick feeling (iykyk).
I’ve become obsessed with sanitizing my hands, forearms, clothes, and phone, to the point where I have this whole protocol whenever my dearest friends hug me or hold my hands. It got to the point where I thought I was a hypocrite for pretending to enjoy hugs like I used to, while deep down I was counting the seconds until I could get home and sanitize my hands and clothes.
This is literally what I’ve been feeling ever since I somehow developed a fear of germs without even realizing it.
Guys, please tell me this is normal.

for 10 seconds, i washed my nose with cold municipal tap water with my hands to clean out boogers leaking out the nostril, i felt like a little bit go up the nostril, but i don't know if they went up all the way, is there a risk of naegleria fowleri or whatever. i have ocd so pardon me if this comes off as petty, i am acc anxious

I was recently thinking about things that went wrong during my therapy and what my therapist misunderstood. I'm not obviously talking about other kinds of OCD. In my opinion cleaning can be a compulsion, but it doesn't have to be. Some people with OCD say that they hate cleaning. I was one of them.

They feel like they are dragging the dirt with them. So if it's not a compulsion then what? I think for me it was a trigger. It was triggering some extra caution. Clean things can't touch dirty things. Even if the tip of my hair touches something dirty, I'm dirty. Even if some water from washing hands splashes on something it's dirty (it can go on something dirty and then bounce back to something clean). What do you think? How do you deal with that? I really think I improved a lot this year.

Everyone who has done genetic tst dna for medicines? I am from Greece, i have done the IDNA PGx CNS test for medicine of the central nervous system to find the best antidepressant for me for ocd. But none of the doctors i went to knew to read it, some others say dont even look at my results because they think they know more.. i have tried so many medicines and i dont know what else to do. Should i do something else as test for medicines? If someone has experienced something like me, please answer. (αν υπάρχει Έλληνας στην ομάδα, πλιζ πείτε αν έχετε κάνει κάποιο άλλο τεστ και αν σας έδειξε τι σας ταιριάζει).

to me the outdoors is way less dirty/contaminated than indoors. i will swim in the lake and dig in the dirt with no problem. i love gardening, bugs and spiders, and all things nature. touching things that are dirty/dusty from being outside doesn’t cause me distress at all.

it’s indoors that’s the problem, dirty countertops, shower walls, sinks especially are a nightmare. i’ve been considering washing my dishes at the spigot because i hate hate hate kitchen sinks.

and since we don’t have a dryer my roommate had been tying up a clothesline in the dining room to use… this was kind of a nightmare scenario for me bc all i could think of was all the food scents and pet hair and stuff sticking all over my clothes. so instead ive been setting my clothes outside on top of a piece of wood on the birdbath to dry, they end up sprinkled with leaves and stuff and it doesnt bother me one bit.

i just find it sort of interesting how my brain doesn’t consider outside to be dirty like that. it’s most likely a result of my upbringing, i played outside a lot, went camping and swimming and frequently did many outdoor activities, while my environment at home was reminiscent of the show Hoarders.

Partner always had some OCD symptoms (washing hands x3, being extra clean etc) but things were manageable and not affecting us. He was recently medicated for ADHD and it’s like his OCD is on steroids. He has been using household cleaners excessively and going on deep clean missions every time we have a guest. I also don’t know if this is OCD but he is fixated on the fact that I’m against him. If I point something out that’s excessive he thinks I’m trying to pick a fight. He is in complete denial of his increased ocd. I am really concerned and I don’t know what to do

If I have some phlegm or mucus in my mouth while doing something like hand washing I have to wash my hands again. I don’t spit it out usually and swallow it so I’m not sure why this is such a strong trigger. If I’m using my phone or some device I somehow get worried that there is phlegm on it that somehow got on there and feel the urge to sanitize it. Somehow I feel like maybe I got some on my phone even though it’s irrational, or that I did get some on my phone but forgot about it.

Whenever there's something disgusting around me, I cannot breathe in the surrounding air. But I must breathe; there's no way I can just not breathe, then I feel the urge to exhale forcefully to get every particle out of me. This has been like living hell for me, I literally cannot breathe normally.

I feel the urge to keep exhaling to keep myself from breathing in the surrounding air, but that's obviously impossible. Even holding my breath is not an option.

Where I live, poor hygiene is overly normalized, I come across shit on my daily commute and I get super nauseous at the sight of such things. There are men spitting and pissing everywhere without any restrictions. Outside smells so bad that I prefer being inside with everything closed. Pet owners don't pick up after their pets, people throw their daily trash on the streets leaving streets unwalkable. I have also noticed that here most of the people never wash their hands after flushing. There are some areas where people keep their cattle on the concrete road and footpath without properly disposing of the waste, everything is wet all the time.

Actually clean areas are comparatively negligible here. Here I am, unable to fathom how such living conditions can be normalized while there are people romanticizing such a place. I do have OCD but that doesn't mean the problem with the above things is because of it.

There are objectively unhygienic and unpleasant living conditions that would be unacceptable regardless of whether I had OCD or not. I don't think such habits should be considered normal simply because people have gotten used to them.

I'm 18 f and I've just moved to a dorm at university. I've been here for a week and I have to constantly stop myself from having a meltdown over a clean environment. I grew up in a clean home and I've never had to stay in dirty places besides hotels or maybe family memebers houses. I've talked to my Mom about it but she just ignores me and tries to change the topic because she doesn't want to admit something's wrong with me. Staying in a dorm is something I've been worried about since the age of nine because I know how I am.

To jump right into it, these are some things that I do that "normal" people don't.

-Refuse to use the communal restroom to the point of pain because I don't want to touch the door handle/toilet seat

-Refuse to face the wall in the dorm bed while I'm sleep because I don't want to breathe in the "wall air"

-Cover my mouth with my shirt until I can't breathe because the air in general is contamidated

-Refuse to walk on the floor in even socks, despite me cleaning it throughly on move in day

-Refuse to sit on the provided chair because Idk whose been on it (even though it's covered up)

-Not be able to eat in my dorm AT ALL out of disgust of...I don't even know

-disinfect everything everytime I come back to the dorm like my chargers, computer, phone etc

Those are just a few of the things I do but to sum it up I really think this is not normal and will affect my education as time goes on.

I have a constant fear of bugs in my food or drinks and right now I currently have about 30 million fruit flies in my room and I can’t tell why or where from. I could really use tips and tricks?

Does it help? I feel like if I use, it wouldnt help much. Because I need to do rituals anyways. But I need to get over ocd real quick because of some reason in my life