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poison and contamination,feeling but not knowing


Guest devOCD

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Hi its my first time posting and i really dont know what to do and feel scared,i have had ocd since i was young and it has ruined my life. I am early 30's now and every year it gets worse. I have been through cbt which helped briefly and have tried different medications but nothing is working.It started with just being clean and tidy, checking, dirt to thinking terrible things ive done which i know i havent but seem so real ect.now im older its on a whole new level i dont trust my own mind.my main problem is everything i own is contaminated my car which i had to sell my home and my clothes but with things i cant see or feel so i can never get reassurance for this,growing up in a broken home and being verbally picked on i think ocd partly stems from this i think this person is poisoning my things,im a very weary person and it could be others too.i feel like i have let them know somehow what im buying and where from so they will contaminate it before i get there,i got rid of my phone because i think im calling people i wouldnt trust.i have thrown away so many clothes which i have travelled the country to find a safe town to buy from.i suffer from other intrusive thoughts but this one seems to always be there.this is so unbearable now im so depressed and upset and im tired of fighting it.i am bothered even posting this on here so ive kept it short and dont want to go into too much detail. im on fluoxetine for the second try with a soon to have combination of another drug.please if anyone has similar thoughts of being purposely harmed from contamination and has intrusive thoughts that seem so real i would appreciate your time and advice posting a reply. Thanks

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Guest lizinlondon

I have contamination OCD too. I have been on fluoxetine for nearly 4 months and it has started helping. It did make my anxiety worse at first though.

I am also doing CBT with exposure. Do you think you would benefit from some more CBT?

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Guest jrb5094

The thoughts always seem real. That's what OCD does to us. If you can imagine something happened or can happen, you bet your you know what OCD will use that against you. We are stuck in a perpetual state of worry. Our minds are tricked into thinking that this worrying is healthy.This might help you ( if you haven't heard this kind of stuff before). It sounds like you have a lot of compulsions, do your best to delay them. It will be very hard to just stop them but do your best to delay them as long as possible and NOT do them when you can. The compulsions actually make the OCD worse.

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It takes quite a while for an SSRI to kick in and start doing some good.

You need to begin to realize that avoiding certain places out of fear of contamination is a compulsion and that is something you need to resist. Ultimately performing compulsions causes obsessions (in your case that things are contaminated) to stay strong and top of mind.

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Guest nervous

Welcome to the board, you've come to the right place.

I have severe contamination ocd and during one bad time I used to think people would be trying to contaminate with some disease on purpose, that was rough, fortunately the paranoia didn't last the ocd however did. I am on Fluoxetine and it seems to be working well, I have been taking it since June this year and then full dosage since September. I only found getting up to the full dosage did anything for me. It could be a coincidence and maybe I just started getting better at the same time but I think it is helping. Living with ocd is a lousy path to be stuck on but the good news is you can beat it. The past month I have been making great progress, I have a long long way to go but I am finally positive. Last summer I just wanted to give up and let ocd win but the misery never settles it just keeps getting worse as you continue to paint yourself into a corner. I hope that you will find the help you need because you don't deserve this, nobody does. This board is great and has helped me so much there are so many knowledgeable people that can offer their support.

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Thank you all for the support. Today i phoned to get started on another CBT course and will start in a few weeks.My doctor advised i go on citalopram tablets.Im feeling a little more positive today.I think that exposing myself to my contamination fears is going to be so hard to deal with.

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Guest nervous

That's great news that you are starting cbt again. Just take it slow and be positive it took me awhile to get it right but now I look forward to doing the ERP. KInda makes me feel like an extreme sports stars, like I'm jumping out of plane just because I am going to sit on a chair that I don't know it's whole life story. Lol.

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Guest lizinlondon

Well done so far. The meds will help you to face exposures. Maybe you need a bit of time for the meds to kick in before doing exposure. You have done the right thing by signing up for CBT, it is a great start.

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I am looking forward to getting started with CBT and i wish i was a little further on with the meds so i start to feel better and am wanting to just start feeling alive when hopefully conquering exposures.I am wondering if because my fear is contamination from a person which i can fear maybe unpredictable to lets say someone elses fear could be touching a toilet seat,thats a static thing with no mind so when doing exposure with the toilet seat and survived it could only vary in dirtiness it seems different when your fear is a person that could change in so many ways.Will CBD be ok if its a person i fear?

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Hi Dev and :welcome: to the forum

OCD can throw up some very bizarre fears. I don't know if you saw the BBC documentary Bedlam which (amongst other things) showed a lady who feared that every person she saw outdoors, she had perhaps murdered and disposed of in a wheelie bin. Doesn't get a lot more extreme....but there are millions of variants on that one.

Medication is only one part in the scenario....what you really need is first class support/treatment from someone with good experience in the treatment of OCD. If you contact Ashley, the CEO of OCD-UK he may be able to guide you towards sourcing that.

OCD can latch on to any manner of fears, so don't worry about that......regardless of the type of fear, it's all OCD, irrational, intrusive, often bizarre.....the fear is real, how it manifests isn't the important issue.

Caramoole :)

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