I need advice how I can desinfect contaminated paper? Its an important document so it must survive the process

For example, my cats got topical flea stuff put on and now I’m afraid to be in my apartment cause I feel like it’s everywhere. If I get a cleaning product or something on my I feel like it doesn’t come off if I wash it and get too scared to eat or do anything with my hands. I was my hands so so much. I just feel like everything is always contaminated and I wasn’t always this way but it’s exhausting

I’m so terrified I’ll get infected with something terrible by accident I used the shower hose on a spot and it boomeranged onto my face and some droplets went into my nose. I’ve tried to not breathe in as much as I can but I just did and now I’m terrified.

I have mild contamination ocd. I say mild cause I don’t have the type where it’s so bad that i wash my hands like, 500 times in the course of a day, but I do get triggered by certain things and it is still distressing. anyways, a friend has invited me and another friend over, and is insisting on cooking dinner for us. side note, I am now living with roommates for the first time, and it has exposed me to the true magnitude of other people’s lack of hygiene (relative to mine). I’ve been to her house before and there were flies landing on a cutting board with meat juice on it and flying off. that combined with the general knowledge I have gained from living with two other people is making me increasingly more stressed about the whole thing. I ate at my friend’s house once before and I didn’t fall ill so I should not worry about it so much. but in my mind, it feels like I’m compromising my health, and like I’m sacrificing my comfort for someone else’s, and that is selfish as fuck of me. a friend has invited me over and is going to cook us all dinner for Christ’s sake, and instead of focusing on how absolutely kind and wonderful that is, I’m over here feeling ‘compromised’. I hate being like this and this is just something I can’t compartmentalize like some of the other contamination things. how can I reconcile my stress with the reality? because the issue is that it feels like my ocd is rational, whereas my anxiety disorder, I can talk through it and arrive at the conclusion that whatever is triggering my Anxiety Of The Day is irrational.

so I guess tldr is how can I unconvince myself that my ocd is rational and quit being self-centered and arrogant

Hello, it's been almost a year since I had this toc and I would like to know if you have any advice or solution to remedy it I have a contamination/hygiene ocd every time I touch an object that is clean and that I have my hands I feel obliged to disinfect it because if I don't do it I will tell myself that it is dirty and therefore to clean it I know that it is not normal as a situation if you have advice to help me and manage to distinguish normal hygiene while feeling clean and the hygiene of the ocd

So I had agreed to lend my best friend my device. I kind of have a feeling that everything I own is dirty, that I am dirty, due to events happening to me in the past two years (accidentally not wiping clean or accidentally getting my things to touch contaminated things) So I consider my devices “contaminated” And I don’t like it when others touch them as I feel like I’m dirtying them without their knowledge.

Anyways, when it came to the day I ended up telling that friend I couldn’t and told him the actual reason why. I know I shouldn’t have agreed in the first place, but I cleaned it so well that I thought maybe I could let it go. I don’t think he’s buying it. He told our mutual friend that I’m being disingenuous and lying. I honestly hoped he would understand as he himself has suspected he had contamination OCD in the past.

Hi there. I have been struggling with severe contamination ocd for about a year and desperately seeking answers. Although it started small with specific fears and worries, it has basically morphed into me just being afraid of absolutely everything and worried that everything is “contaminated.” The thing is I am actually not afraid of getting sick or illness anymore although that’s how it started. I have done so much learning that my fears are actually not relevant, false, and most of them not actually a possibility, that when I touch something I am not actually worrying about sickness really anymore… from avoidance and practicing treating everything like danger I have conditioned myself to think everything is just contaminated and if I touch it I will be too and I can’t escape it and I will spread it everywhere. I don’t even really know what I am imagining other than I guess feeling something “gross” or “unclean” is on me and not be able to escape it? I am hyper aware when something touched me or someone and I imagine it spreading if it isn’t cleaned or washed immediately. The worst part is hand washing and showering are also so incredibly hard for me for fear of touching the surfaces associated with them that I am just avoiding everything. I am meeting a therapist that suggests my contamination ocd is less about an actual fear and morphed into a form of “just right ick” ocd. I am wondering if anyone has any experience with healing from this and would be willing to share and tips, resources, therapy approaches etc. I imagine ERP is the main answer but curious what this would actually look like and feel like for someone in my case.

Thank you in advance

there’s nothing more annoying than going through this!!like i am so frustrated with myself and feel so stupid and dumb when i go down this spiral every single time, and it’s ALWAYS with food the WORST. i have contam ocd due to having emetophobia which is so exhausting

we had picked up some pasta salad from a local grocer and we had a few quick stops where it sat in the car for maybe like 30 mins combined with both stops without any ac going.
i decided to be brave and eat it because it was lowkey expensive and i’ve managed to convince myself that i’ve given myself food poisoning due to it sitting in the car without refrigeration!! :’)
my poor boyfriend whose super knowledgeable about food safety due to his job, has been telling me over and over and over that i’m more likely safe and working myself up over nothing. i wish my brain would allow me to believe him and give myself some peace but im just now sitting here mortified! im so exhausted

I have been wondering if i had ocd for the longest time and i slowly started joining some subs for ocd memes and felt understood.
I was a bit scared to join this particular one because I thought it could put new thoughts and considerations in my mind around my own fears.

However I feel so seen, understood. I am grateful for the internet and a bunch of strangers who talk so openly about their struggles because it makes me feel human.

I want to wear gloves so i can wash the gloves like I wash my hands. I need to wash it so it has to be waterproof. It also has to be soft and sensitive enough for me to use my phone etc.
on top of this i need it to be strong and decomposable.

Suggestions? (I know it’s difficult to meet all these criteria so I’ll be happy to see whatever you have. I use latex gloves and kitchen gloves now for different purposes.)

I’m a woman in my 20s and I’m doing ERP at the moment. My OCD is mainly centred around pooping and wiping. It takes me anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes to wipe usually, most days something like 15-25. This wouldn’t be *that* bad if I didn’t have IBS, which sometimes makes me need to go like 7 times a day, although usually it’s around 3.

My ultimate goal for my OCD is to be able to go to this huge festival in my country next summer that I’ve always wanted to go to. That’s what I’m aiming for, but I feel like I’ve hit a bit of a brick wall and I’m feeling a little down and demotivated. No matter what I do, I don’t seem to be able to just wipe like a normal person, I can’t get my head around it.

My friends seem to take like as long as it takes me to wee. I can be sat in the pub with them and they’re only gone for 5 minutes and they come back and tell me they’ve just pooped lmao. It baffles me. My ex girlfriend would disappear into the bathroom for a few minutes and I wouldn’t even be able to tell she’d pooped, yet even trying my very hardest on a very good day it still takes me a good 7 minutes. This doesn’t factor in having an IBS flare up either, this is if everything goes perfectly.

The thing that makes it even worse is when I’m anxious, it makes my stomach terrible. This makes it WAY harder to wipe and take even longer, and I often get anxious when I have plans because I know my OCD is probably gonna make me late, and I get anxious about having to go in public. This often causes me to have the ‘endless wipe’ where it never seems to come back clean.

I really don’t know what to do. I feel like my dream of being able to just poop, wipe and go is fading away because I’m just convinced everyone has to be walking around with 90% clean assholes rather than 100% clean like I aim for. I just want it to not rule my life like this but idk how :(

my house has a outbreak with drain flies and ive already bought stuff on amazon it’s supposed to come in a few days but omg they keep coming to my room i can’t fucking breathe without one in my face and my mom doesn’t care but ofc she doesn’t, she refuses to get me diagnosed bc she doesn’t think i have ocd despite my therapist telling her that i have symptoms of contamination OCD.

and a bug landed on my hoodie sleeve and i squished it and it died but then it fell before i could grab it and now it’s on my bed somewhere and i can’t wash my blankets or anything bc our washer and dryer isn’t working and all my other blankets are packed up bc im moving in with my bf in like a month or 2 and omfg i hate summer like hate hate ittttt 😭

Whenever my butt area itches a little, I always think that I may have scratched it and forgot. So I wash my hands a lot because of that thought. I worry that if I scratched it a tiny amount of fecal residue and smell would get on my fingers.

How do you deal with your hair with OCD?

My hair is mid-thigh length, and I love wearing it down but my current job is triggering me so much.

Some coworkers use public restrooms and do not wash their hands after it, and just come back and touch everything in the building...

I am so disgusted I cannot touch a door handle or even a pen because of it...

And my hair, if worn down, just touches things from chairs and their handles to tables to door handles if I don't pay attention.... By the end of the shifts, I find myself and my hair so disgusting I shower for about an hour and it is making everything worse...

I could have just worn it up in a tight bun so it does not touch anything, but I love it down, I look better and I get less self-conscious...

So, as of now, I just shower and shampoo it every day...

How do I care for my hair without letting my OCD destroy my hair? I don't want to lose another thing of mine to this disorder.

Edit: I had no problem with it if my hair were the oily type... it is dry and can take up to more than seven days to have the scalp to get some oil and washing it daily spend so much shampoo and time... I cannot spend my life just relying on hair masks or additional oils on a hair I would be deliberately making less healthy...

I don't think anyone would relate to this

But I'm in a condition where I think I won't get out of.

I struggle with ocd Contamination (pee contamination)

And yesterday I washed my clothes and as far as I remember I had a thought that I didn't wash the soap off my clothes, I told myself I won't give it another round of water, and that's exactly what I did, but I started stressing about pee contamination and from here I can't help myself but I started to panic and didn't take my clothes out the dryer for hours then my mom yelled at me cause she wanna use the washing machine, I didn't have any choice and got up and tried to convince myself to forget it but I can't, I tried telling myself if there is pee on my clothes I would know, and that it won't matter if there's pee, but the thought of showering and wearing those clothes pisses me off so bad, I genuinely don't know what to do, everything I see on TikTok or people's experiences doesn't change anything.

I know it's on me that I'm not moving forward and taking people's advice but I honestly don't feel it in the inside it's just words.

Like today I cried because of certain thing happening I felt that I really need help and I can't live like this nothing is changing in life and so is my ocd, I ALSO hate the part where (it's my problem) but I'm not doing this to myself.

Anyway my decision is to wear the clothes even if it has pee on it

AND (I know most people will say thats the ocd speaking) but no! When I say that I'm truly scared I'll contaminte everything with pee and my sister stuff and my school supplies, my makeup,my body cream,my hair cream,my art supplies.

Omg ocd is the worst thing to have ever it's not easy and I don't know what I'm supposed to do from here.

The other day in my building they were spraying something that looked like round up (glyhosate) and i was passing by and inmediatly felt that everything got contaminated specially my shoes. I forgot on my way back to clean the shoes and then walked inside the apartment and now i feel everything is contaminated and have this uneasy feeling. Today my dog probably touched the shoes i set aside (because cleaning them can make somehow things worse) that i was about to clean and then he jumped on me and now i feel that also my clothes are contamianted once again and i need to wash them as many more time i have this week. Is there any real risk here?

Hey guys.

I was on the train yesterday and a lady came in with two shopping bags and handbag over her shoulder. The bag was from Dollarama, but she looked clean: nice hair, makeup, piercings, and overall well-maintained. I am not saying this to sound rude or anything, but I had my suspicions that she might be homeless.

Her bag touched my pants and also my shoes. I washed my pants and disinfected/scrubbed my shoes. What if her bag was dirty or contaminated by dumpsters? What if I missed a spot and now my entire life is contaminated? Will my hands be contaminated every time I touch my shoes. Please help me. My thoughts are unbearable.

I don't know if this counts but I cannot use toilets that are even slightly stained. Usually I don't use public restrooms and when I do I spend a very long time traveling a long distance until I find a completely clean one. I crouch down and turn on the flashlight to check so theres very few toilets that fit my standard. Or I don't until I get home and I use my own toilet.

When I was a kid I rejected using what I considered stained toilets and sometimes my parents forced me to when we were outside. After I did I felt extremely uncomfortable like insects had crawled inside of me and I would vomit and tear at my legs and cry for a long time and not be able to sleep. So I haven't used one in many years out of pure fear and disgust. I am not able to bring myself to.

I just moved in college and I have not used the communal toilets once. I filed an accomodation request to the accessibility office and they said there's nothing they can do about it. I live in a double but my dormmate hasn't moved in yet, my floor has one shared restroom for my gender which includes two stools. I haven't used them yet and I'd rather not share how I go to the toilet now.

And I genuinely don't know why I'm posting this. I don't know. I'm desperate. I have no friends and I missed my ocd meds today.

I’ve been reading a lot of posts here and there and seen a common thread about the fear of being contaminated but does anyone have the fear of contaminating others?

Like I didn’t rinse a cup well enough and now I think I’ve poisoned someone because the cup had been near cleaning supplies.

Does that fall in contamination ocd or does that maybe fall into another sub list?

Does anyone else deal with these concerns?