r/ContaminationOCD

Hi, I know it sounds stupid but I just need some reassurance. I have a serious phobia of germs, more so blood. I grabbed a drink from the store, glass soda. I washed the bottle with soap and water. I thought I had rinsed it off well enough. But when I opened it and took a drink I noticed it was still a little soapy on the opening where my mouth touched and I took a sip from.

My mind is telling me someone could have cut themselves on the bottle, but I have no way of knowing as I did not look before I washed it. My question is if there was something on the bottle, would there be any chance of catching something from the soapy water that was on the bottle that I drank from? Or am I okay and I don't need to worry about it??

Thanks a bunch on advance:)

I have COCD and every time my hand brushes something I have to wash it (including the sink) and although I can’t avoid this entirely, I learned (before I went on meds) to open and touch everything with my feet so I wouldn’t have to be in contact with anything ever again. Just curious: has this happened to anyone else?

I want to start dating again, but terrified of going to someones house and not being able to enjoy the moment because of thoughts. How do you guys deal with this?

i went to pee and was unsure if my sleeping shorts touched the toilet bowl. i mean i literally saw that it was so close to touching but didn’t (?) but now ive convinced myself that it did touch. again, i saw with my own two eyes that it didn’t touch, but i cant help but think it might have and i just hallucinated not touching.

wonder if anyone else’s mind gets stuck on shit like this

Hi. This is really embarrassing for me to talk about, but I genuinely don’t know how I’m supposed to interact with other humans in a romantic or intimate way without my OCD telling me that they’re contaminated. I want to date and find someone, but I feel so disgusted and disturbed with the idea of that with the thoughts I get (i.e., the amount of bacteria swapped when kissing). I would really appreciate any advice or any tactics you have used to try to conquer these thoughts. How do you become intimate with someone when you fear they’re going to contaminate you?

So I have really bad ocd specifically with vibes and this job a I recently got for the first time feels off like it just feels off mostly because I thought I saw someone who think is someone but not 100% sure it’s mostly faces but I just idk if my vibe based ocd is real like is it because most of the time I feel like I can help but idk maybe it’s just me being crazy I honestly wish I didn’t have vibe based OCD just certain things feel right and certain things don’t I’ve been working this job for two weeks and still don’t trust any of the money because bad vibe I wish I could so I honestly a lot of I just spend on food but honestly I wish I didn’t have it I wish I could live a normal life and that I didn’t have it was every morning I have to get up and if dosent feel right on the leg I got up on then I have to try again and again just so it feels right I live in constant stress with this job you’d think being here for so long would help with it to my mental illness but nope but honestly thinking about setting up a go fund so I can brain surgery I’m tired tired of my whole life being hell

I'm so sick of this man. I hold off peeing JUST because i don't want to deal with cleaning. I literally always bleach the damn toilet every single time i have to use it. Granted, the boys in my family sometimes leave stains on it and it drives me insane. But even when it looks clean, I still gotta clean the top, the sides, the inside 😪

Hi all. I’m new to this group. Does anyone else have OCD based around chemicals? I’ve been suffering with it for about 3.5 years (it started post partum).

I improved last year after 3 months of CBT but it’s come back as we‘ve started to need to do some renovations on the house and there‘s loads of decisions around products. I obsessively research and never find enough to reasssurance that chemicals will be safe. Everything seems toxic and if there‘s smells or dust, I spiral and feel like we‘re all being poisoned slowly.

I keep cancelling the tradespeople coming in, and my husband is losing his mind because he doesn’t know how to help me anymore.

I have started setraline for the first time this week and hoping that will help me just expose myself to these things and move on.

I am not sure why I am posting here. just looking for people going through something similar, and for some hope that one day feel like this

i’m just grossed out some of my biggest fears are like diseases or bird flu or disease from rats or deers. And it just stressed me out because she came back inside and didn’t wash her hands- went to her phone and probably won’t wash her hands . And i just get stressed because i think of everything she touching in the house and it’s so stressful for me

If i asked her to wash her hands or anything she would get mad at me so im just suffering

my ocd is so debilitating. I have to grab packages a certain way or it means I have to return the item inside because it got contaminated by me and my contaminated clothes. I want to have a normal life so bad i miss the old me who didn’t need to wash her hair every day. I miss dressing up nicely, keeping my stuff, having makeup I use everyday, styling my hair. I miss not making people walk around eggeshells. my new trigger is “feet particles” now.

I hate shoelaces… tell me why I was walking and they were draggingggg along the floor. I tied them. So now surely faeces and god knows what are quite simply all over my hands and infecting all I touch. Including my hair. I might as well have just wiped my hands on the dirty ass city ground

BTW I can’t imagine just navigating the world and not thinking about this, must be like super nice

I had a set back earlier. I went to a phone store. While I was waiting for help I noticed one of the workers dig in the trash to get something out. This same person then proceeded to help me next, which included touching my phone. The trash looked to have only paper in it. I did ok ignoring it a bit at first, but once I got home I had to disinfectant my car, phone, keys, etc.. This person did not know I had this issue, I have no ill feelings against them. I am disappointed that I fell into my compulsions though. I go to therapy and am on medication. I have had great progress with both, but this set back got to me a bit. I will never give up on recovering from these obsessive thoughts. I have hope, and these thoughts will never take that away from me. Never give up, even if you have a set back. Get back up and try again.

Ive found myself asking my husband to wash his hands over ridiculous things and change out of his "outdoor" clothes all the time and i know im driving him crazy lol. How do you guys handle this ?

Basically I’ve been really scared about bird flu since I learned about it accidentally. And over time it’s been getting worse moving back from city to woodland critter filled neighborhood. My mom recently put like a hanging bird seed feeder near the railing on the stairs we gotta walk by everyday. My mind goes “bird seed bird poop a bunch of birds in the area we gonna step on stuff and track stuff into the house and get bird flu”

But therapist said she thinks this will be good for me…. That was kinda rough just because i felt frustrated of like “how long of it being there and me getting increasingly more worried because overtime more birds will be there i don’t have hope I would eventually not care about it”

BuBUT until i learned about bird flu and diseases i loved animals and even fed crows peanuts on balcony.

i used to have zero problems with contamination. i shared drinks with friends, ate food i had dropped on the floor no issues and used to go swimming in dirty lakes and rivers.

Until one day i was reading too much online and discovered the dreaded brain eating amoeba that people love to talk about online. from that point i started becoming scared of stagnant water and then that progressed into tap water and then so on and so on.

that then went to all germs and i started going crazy with the soap and antibacterial hand gel. to the point where i wouldn’t leave my room coz everywhere was dirty.

i have slowly recovered from this however i must say that this is what ocd can do to you when left undiagnosed and untreated. I didn’t leave my room for a whole week because of it while my parents had to pass me meals through my window which is just awful.

so as someone who has suffered badly with this ocd fear before my advice is stop reading the scary stories online, stop asking chat gbt every ten minutes for reassurance and start going out more and experiencing life without having to disinfect everything all the time.