someone peeing on roadside...pls pls pls help!

[lonely mum]

My contamination OCD makes it so hard to go outside my house. I end up bringing contamination back inside and I hate going out. Over the holiday, I went out with family. We were on the motorway, in the middle lane and I noticed a car had parked up on the hard shoulder and saw someone was on the grass (they were up a grassy slope) and their back against the road. Instantly I thought they are weeing there and we have drove past and its contaminated my car. I have been vigilant about not touching my side of the car (which is contaminated) but hubby fuelled up and he touched this side of the car so now the contamination is spreading. I dont know what to do. I have been cleaning like crazy but he wore the same top today and im petrified of him and this contamination. I cant talk to him about this and really hope someone can help. Im going crazy and tired of cleaning. I cant keep up.

[PolarBear]

ERP would teach you to resist the temptation to clean. Your anxiety will come down of its own accord without participating in the compulsion to clean and clean.

[lonely mum]

Thanks for your reply PolarBear. I do struggle with ERP particularly if im not sure if my fears are rational or not.

Is it even possible that urine got on the car? Im sorry if I sound crazy. I know reassurance is not meant to be the way but i really need a logical answer to this.

[PolarBear]

You are asking for reassurance. My answer is that pee might have gotten on your car. The real question is whether you can live with that uncertainty.

[lonely mum]

I cant live with uncertainty. Im a control freak..lol but I dont want contamination of other peoples urine in my home. I know im asking for reassurance because I dont get that in my life and it makes me a lot worse. I cant cope

[dksea]

I cant live with uncertainty. Im a control freak..lol but I dont want contamination of other peoples urine in my home. I know im asking for reassurance because I dont get that in my life and it makes me a lot worse. I cant cope

Except the reality is you live with uncertainty all the time, we ALL do. There is literally no way to be 100% certain about anything in life. You can fight all you want for certainty but you will always lose. But you don't have to fight for 100% certainty, its absolutely possible for you to live a full and eventful life without it. We know because its what people have been doing for thousands of years.

If you want to get better from OCD you'll have to be able to accept uncertainty in your life, otherwise you'll be forever trapped. The good news is its totally possible to do it, in fact you do it about all sorts of things in your life on a daily basis. Unfortunately OCD makes it hard to accept uncertainty about a few things in our lives (it varies for each of us) and thus we struggle.

[daisy]

Hi lonely mum,i can completly relate to how you are feeling as i would be thinking the same.Now i know we are not supposed to give reassurance but i would say that it's highly unlikely to have got on your car especially with you being in the middle lane but i don't expect that me saying this will help really,which i suppose is why reassurance doesn't work,i do really feel for you though and completely understand your fears.

I hope you soon start to feel calmer x

[lonely mum]

Thanks for your reply dksea.

Daisy- nice to hear from you again :original: and thank you for your reply. Your reassurance does help me as I dont really have anyone else to talk to so for me it is better to speak about it instead of bottling things up. I hate that even car journeys become a nightmare and if I didnt have my child I dont think i would even set my foot out of the house.

How are you keeping? Would love to hear from you x

[lonely mum]

Oh and if this persons back was against the road, then surely any urine wouldnt be flying behind them and onto the road would it?

[PolarBear]

It might.

[lonely mum]

How??? so my hubby would have caught the urine off the car?

[gingerbreadgirl]

hi lonely mum

I totally understand your frustration and the desperate need for certainty, but unfortunately searching for reassurance, although it might temporarily make you feel better, is going to make your ocd much worse in the long run. This thread is a prime example: you were given some reassurance, which made you feel better, but now you're hungry for more. Unfortunately the way ocd works, no amount of reassurance is ever enough, and it feeds the fire of your ocd. I totally understand how you feel and I think reassurance can help occasionally but I really think in this case it is important to work at accepting the uncertainty about your car. have you seen a GP or had any therapy for your ocd? x

Edited April 23, 2014 by gingerbreadgirl

[Guest Tricia]

I don't wish to upset anyone, but it's impossible for urine to have reached the car. The only slight chance is if there had been a hurricane at the time. If something is not possible, I'd rather be honest, and in this incident it isn't.

I do agree about living with uncertainty and it's worked for me in the past, but it doesn't help with my current obsession and I have seen how it doesn't always work for my friends with OCD.

Although Lonely Mum has asked for reassurance again, is it because some are saying urine might have reached the car?

ERP would teach you to resist the temptation to clean. Your anxiety will come down of its own accord without participating in the compulsion to clean and clean.

Although this is clearly true in many cases, it is not always so. In the last sentence above I would write 'is likely to' (come down), rather than 'will' ,

Lonely Mum, even if a hurricane were blowing and some urine did get on your car, it would do no harm. I'm not sure whether harm is your concern or whether it's merely revulsion (I suffer the latter, so do understand). I was once sprayed full in the face with urine. Not pleasant, but I came to no harm even though the person had a very highly infectious disease.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Tricia

[dksea]

@Tricia - The problem is unlikely or not, even if every single one of us were to tell Lonely Mum that the urine hadn't reached her car it wouldn't help. "But what if..." is still there. Part of moving forward in the battle with OCD involves learning to accept doubt. One specific way to achieve this is to accept that the feared event could possibly have happened. To accept that "yes, its possible urine might have gotten to the car" and still move forward even with that doubt.

[PolarBear]

Excellent couple of posts. If this was the physics forum I would have given a definitive answer about the pee reaching the car. This is the ocd forum, however.

Giving assurance in a case like this does no good. Zero. As others have pointed out, living with uncertainty is the goal.

[Guest Tricia]

@Tricia - The problem is unlikely or not, even if every single one of us were to tell Lonely Mum that the urine hadn't reached her car it wouldn't help. "But what if..." is still there. Part of moving forward in the battle with OCD involves learning to accept doubt. One specific way to achieve this is to accept that the feared event could possibly have happened. To accept that "yes, its possible urine might have gotten to the car" and still move forward even with that doubt.

I do see your point and agree we have to live with uncertainty. I just can't lie, and in this case what Lonely Mum fears is impossible.

[Caramoole]

If you want to get better from OCD you'll have to be able to accept uncertainty in your life, otherwise you'll be forever trapped.

OCD is a dreadful condition but we do have to make a decision about what we're going to do to change things (or not) that will affect the outcome and how our lives are affected.

If we don't make any change, nothing will change, the problem(s) will continue to blight our lives. In most cases improvements can be achieved.

Many people see a physiotherapist for all manner of problems. They attend the appointment and whilst there, do the exercises that are recommended. They may do them twice a day for the next two days, then forget a day, then do them once the next day and then not again until the next appointment. They'll often report that they had physio for their shoulder (or whatever) and it didn't work!

The same is often true with OCD/anxiety/panic. We go for CBT or learn the principals via self-help books, forums like this etc....we understand what's been said but we don't actually put it into practice. We take it on board intellectually but don't actually make the changes.

It's understandable because it hurts, it is frightening, it brings up the very doubts and fears we want to avoid at any cost. Sadly, avoiding the fears, trying to assuage the doubt will not work, ever. So we have to choose. Are we going to let this affect the rest of our lives or are we going to try and start to make changes that may help us to see a significant improvement?

Did urine hit the car or not? It's not important. If anyone else passing that person was asked the question, they would say it was ridiculous....because it is ridiculous. That's not saying that Lonely Mum is ridiculous, simply that OCD poses ridiculous doubts and questions which is why it is so powerful.

Caramoole

[lonely mum]

Thanks for your your comments guys.

Polar bear - I know what you were doing asnd that is not feeding my need for reassurance.

Gingerbreadgirl- I did have a few group sessions of CBT but it doesnt help me. If anything I was getting more exhausted and emotional. I know I need to carry out steps to overcome my OCD but I need baby steps and dont always know what a 'normal' stance should be on matters/doubts/experiences.

Tricia- Thank you for your honesty. Im not scared of any 'harm' but rather that its just filty and dirty. Sometimes I just need to know how to react and realise that my behaviour/thinking is irrational because things get exaggerated

Caramoole- Its hard to run away from fears and doubts because its always there. When one things is over (or not), another starts. Ive been exhausted today as had another episode, only to come down to write here on my laptop and something else has set me off again. Im sitting here thinking 'why did I not just go to bed?' Im exhasuted!

[Guest Tricia]

I'm so sorry to hear that yours is also a revulsion as it seems to be harder to treat (or so I was told at the Maudsley). I do know that I overcame a fear of germs relatively easily, but can't seem to shift this dirty/revolted feeling. I know there is hope though as others with the same symptom have written on here that they are very much better.

Yes, it's truly exhausting isn't it, because our minds are never really relaxed.

[Caramoole]

Caramoole- Its hard to run away from fears and doubts because its always there. When one things is over (or not), another starts. Ive been exhausted today as had another episode, only to come down to write here on my laptop and something else has set me off again. Im sitting here thinking 'why did I not just go to bed?' Im exhasuted!

It is exhausting, it's soul-destroying and demoralising

When one things is over (or not), another starts

Sadly, it's only by changing our response that we start to hopefully gain control so that we can be in charge when another OCD fear hits us.

It's like this one with the urine, one of the things you were driven and compelled to do was find reassurance about the situation. Firstly, by asking on the forums for feedback in the hope that it would assure you no urine could be on the car. I would hazard a guess you've possibly asked you Hubby and others for similar reassurance,maybe looked things up on the computer.

It is those things that we have to steadily work towards giving up on. When we do it will cause anxiety and distress and the urge to know will increase...but these are the areas we need to work on so that we can eventually, hopefully get to a place where these doubts don't cause anxiety or revulsion or whatever emotion that troubles us.

Caramoole

[Guest kimbot]

1. strategy one:

Try and cling on to the times when you were younger and didn't have OCD and how you would have responded to someone peeing in the same vicinity as you.

For example, i remember when i was little playing in ball pools which always used to have an 'interesting' smell to them….didn't mind then cos I was too little to care and busy having fun, and even with a weaker immune system than the one I've developed now, I didn't get ill.

2. strategy two:

write a flow diagram to show how the pee could spread, leading all the way to its perceived 'outcome' (i.e. the thing you're afraid of it actually doing). Look at the pure number of arrows!!!

For example… man pees on side of road- pee particles fly through the air and manage to get as far as the car- pee particles manage to somehow stick to side of the car -hubby rubs up against the car in exactly the same place as the pee particles stick- your child touches that precise part of the jumper with pee on it- your child puts their hand in their mouth-The bacteria from the mans pee has somehow managed to transfer itself very precisely 4 ways and even then for your worst case scenario outcome the mans pee would have had to carry a virus that could survive cold, inorganic surfaces for any length of time…there aren't many of those about!!!

Now rate out of 100 how likely this is to actually happen. Or how much money you would bet on the chances of that happening…maybe even make that bet with your hubby and sit with the anxiety…he can take the responsibility if anything goes wrong then, but I think you'll find you'll be out of pocket!!

strategy three:

Laugh about it...

Hopefully you'll laugh at this story, but I used a public toilet (for the first time in years) last week and sadly got a little bit of 'splash back'!!! i needed reassurance straight away and phoned my doctor and friends, everything. The doctor was great and researched everything to conclude that there is nothing I can catch from the water in a public toilet, my friend told me an anecdotal story of a time where she actually fell into a portaloo…. the thing that made me realise it was my OCD rather than a 'real worry' was that something similar had happened to virtually everyone i spoke to. None of these people got ill.

These rate the strategies Ive found useful so far with my therapy which I've been attending for 6 months.

Hope they help you too

Good luck

[PolarBear]

Strategies that involve trying to work out obsessions and eliminate doubt are counterproductive. Living with doubt is the key to weakening the grip of obsessions.

[gingerbreadgirl]

I agree - I once tried strategies exactly like these for an ocd fear of mine and it made it a lot worse, keeping me focused on my fears and the surrounding compulsions (in fact the above strategies sound an awful lot like compulsions in themselves). Just in my humble opinion, though!

[Guest kimbot]

You might be right. living with doubt and being comfortable with it is the most freeing feeling.

Strategies i have learnt are helping me to 'get by' in the medium term but Im beginning to understand they are by no means a long term solution.