Does anyone else suffer from emotional contamination

[AttemptingToHeal]

Does anyone else on here suffer from this? I see a lot of posts about physical contaminations such as blood and germs, but I haven't seen any yet about emotional contamination.

In my case for example, imagine I don't like someone because they've been horrible to me at some point to a significant degree to make me unhappy, I'll see something I associate with them and avoid it, or if I touch that thing I'll need to remove the influence from me as if it's a sticky mental substance. If I associate a location with something I don't like emotionally, like an old work place that I didn't like, I'll have to avoid it. If I have to walk through it I'll have to do some sort of rituals to enure safely getting through it or not getting its influence in my life.

Getting the influence in my life usually means to me that I'd experience those feelings I'm avoiding again, because my life will become the same as it was then. So by being somewhere, touching something, thinking of something, I'll make that influence appear in my life. It also feels like it will effect everything else too, so the attitude displayed to me by one person in the past will become the attitude displayed to me by everyone. The emotions usually centre around things I fear in my life too, such as loneliness or failure.  In any case I'll do elaborate routines or need to engage in compulsions to rid myself of the influence, often these rituals have little or nothing to do with the original contamination. It's not as simple as washing my hands, it could be anything from taking a certain number of steps to touching something that removes the influence more times than I touched the contaminated thing. The whole range of possible compulsions really. Does anyone else get this? How does it look for your life? How do you feel it effects you?

Edited January 16, 2017 by Ashley
Edited swear filter bypass

[PolarBear]

Whether you get an answer to your questions or not, what do you think you should do about this?

[AttemptingToHeal]

I know that I just need to work on ignoring the idea that I'm in any way contaminated and simply get on with things. I'm now already working on doing that. I was more interested to see how this effects others. I find that seeing the same patterns in others helps me classify it more as a disease. Also it would be nice to hear how other people handle these things.

Edited January 16, 2017 by AttemptingToHeal

[taurean]

1 hour ago, AttemptingToHeal said:

If I associate a location with something I don't like emotionally, like an old work place that I didn't like, I'll have to avoid it. If I have to walk through it I'll have to do some sort of rituals to enure safely getting through it or not getting its influence in my life.

This is quite commonplace but it's just OCD. 

Giving it a name like emotional contamination is giving it importance that isn't helpful. 

We feed the disorder by making connections - if we then engage in compulsions with a view to magically undoing the connection, we just make the obsession and its "connections"stronger. 

For me, we need to challenge - stand up to - the connections. 

Go to the place with the bad vibes - open up to those thoughts - seek not to try and push them away, neutralise them - try and make them better with some dreamed up magic compulsion. None of this is remotely helpful. 

Sitting with those thoughts, feeling the anxiety but recognising them as the results of OCD can. 

It wasn't the location or the building that gave you the bad experience - it was what happened to you there at a certain time 

Allowing that to make a rule that you must not go there, it's horrible, it will be hurtful is wrong. 

Sit there - see the building for the inert bricks mortar and metal that it really is. What happened to you could have happened anywhere - tagging it to this place won't make it better, but will keep it alive. 

This is ERP. You don't have to be there to do it, you can continue it by recalling this experience. 

It's CBT in action and gradually it works. 

Strip away those compulsions - they are completely pointless responses to an irrelevant nonsense of a rule.

Carry on in this way and the OCD will restrict your life massively. 

Remind yourself that with your mental contamination you are applying the same restrictions as physical contaminant sufferers. Their trail of contamination is mimicked by yours.

 

 

[paradoxer]

Yep, it's all OCD. Physical ... metaphysical contamination ... magical thinking ... the same thing, the same rules apply.  

[Ashley]

11 hours ago, AttemptingToHeal said:

In my case for example, imagine I don't like someone because they've been horrible to me at some point to a significant degree to make me unhappy, I'll see something I associate with them and avoid it, or if I touch that thing I'll need to remove the influence from me as if it's a sticky mental substance.

This is a relatively new form of OCD called 'mental contamination', Adam Radomsky's written a fair bit about it.  Like others have said it is generally treated like any other form of OCD.

[AttemptingToHeal]

Thanks all for the replies.

On 16/01/2017 at 06:57, taurean said:

Giving it a name like emotional contamination is giving it importance that isn't helpful. 

We feed the disorder by making connections - if we then engage in compulsions with a view to magically undoing the connection, we just make the obsession and its "connections"stronger. 

For me, we need to challenge - stand up to - the connections. 

It wasn't the location or the building that gave you the bad experience - it was what happened to you there at a certain time 

Allowing that to make a rule that you must not go there, it's horrible, it will be hurtful is wrong. 

Sit there - see the building for the inert bricks mortar and metal that it really is. What happened to you could have happened anywhere - tagging it to this place won't make it better, but will keep it alive. 

This is ERP. You don't have to be there to do it, you can continue it by recalling this experience. 

Strip away those compulsions - they are completely pointless responses to an irrelevant nonsense of a rule.

Remind yourself that with your mental contamination you are applying the same restrictions as physical contaminant sufferers. Their trail of contamination is mimicked by yours.

Some very good points there, thank you. Those are very helpful to me and have helped me see the contamination in a slightly different way. Especially the point that the place is not to blame for the experience.

On 16/01/2017 at 15:56, Ashley said:

This is a relatively new form of OCD called 'mental contamination', Adam Radomsky's written a fair bit about it.  Like others have said it is generally treated like any other form of OCD.

Thanks for the tip. I'll look up his work on that.

[ChrissH]

i mainly have contamination ocd but also a bit of yours too. i hate anything old especially places where i was unhappy and tried to avoid them. i find when im not tired and feel strong i can ignore these  feelings and go to these places. its hard so thats why i cant be tired or feeling worried or down. i then make that place new again and ok, i call it luck or unlucky or dirty and clean. So you can replace bad for good, just make sure you are in right mood to do so if possible.

 

[taurean]

I think it works similar to a phobia.

My wife and I driopped in to take an elderly  relative out for the afternoon . We told her where we were going, and she said she has a phobia about that town  as her handbag was stolen in the shopping mall there. 

I said look, let's go there together - it's a lovely place and it's a shame if you have that seeded event causing you to avoid it. if we take you, will you go along with it. It's not the town or the place's fault, your bag could have been stolen anywhere. 

She was comfortable with this, and wanted to break the phobia. We went, we even went into the shopping mall, and she was so pleased we did it. I have been back to that town with her on two separate occasions since and she never mentioned that phobia, that bad memory has been erased.

This concept interests me. There are similarities between ocd and phobias - seeding events, restrictive rules. But I  certainly do believe that in OCD too we can overwrite a bad memory with a better interpretation.

[AttemptingToHeal]

3 hours ago, ChrissH said:

i mainly have contamination ocd but also a bit of yours too. i hate anything old especially places where i was unhappy and tried to avoid them. i find when im not tired and feel strong i can ignore these  feelings and go to these places. its hard so thats why i cant be tired or feeling worried or down. i then make that place new again and ok, i call it luck or unlucky or dirty and clean. So you can replace bad for good, just make sure you are in right mood to do so if possible.

 

So when you make it clean you are essentially contaminating it with a good influence? I can see, in my own OCD, how that makes sense. The way I see things, I could see myself doing that, in fact I do to some extent because if I've been going back to a place long enough it then becomes associated with this new time.

[AttemptingToHeal]

3 hours ago, taurean said:

This concept interests me. There are similarities between ocd and phobias - seeding events, restrictive rules. But I  certainly do believe that in OCD too we can overwrite a bad memory with a better interpretation.

I can see what you're saying here. I also think this about lucky things. People will believe that certain actions are lucky and so do them, like putting on a lucky shirt for a job interview. Also sometimes I think religious acts may be similar thinking, like saying a certain prayer will have you forgiven for your sins, that sort of thing.