panman123

Thank you for the perspective, I'm trying to distract myself a bit from this and the rumination and we'll see how it goes.

Thank you for the response, indeed it's important to keep perspective although of course it's easier said than done. I have seen a therapist for OCD before but now I'm strongly considering seeing someone who specializes in OCD. Even though it is the right thing to do making that first step to see a professional is hard itself for some reason.

Hi there, a while back on this forum I posted about a new OCD fear I had about possible exposure to harmful cancer causing chemicals. For context a hazardous waste facility in the town I live in caught on fire in 2006 and caused an evacuation due to the smoke. Around the year 2016 my family lived in a rented house very close to where this facility was for around a year. I randomly thought of this and my OCD latched onto it and caused me a great deal of anxiety. I was basically afraid of possible environmental exposure to harmful chemicals from this fire. I found a report saying there was little to non contamination from this fire and little by little my fears about this dwindled. I appreciated the help dealing with this fear but I am posting again because it has come back and it is extremely hard to handle. Over the past couple days I'm not sure why but I did a googling frenzy over this fire and found a page discussing a possible documentary that may be in the works about the town and this fire. The listing mentioned that over the past couple of years 3 children who lived in the town developed the same rare form of Brain cancer and they are wondering it it is related to the hazardous waste facility fire. This is obviously a terrible thing for these families and children to endure and it has caused me great deal of panic. Now I'm scared of getting ill in the future and I'm having thoughts of throwing away all of my possessions that were in that old house to minimize any possible exposure to chemicals or chemical residue. I really cannot tell if I'm being reasonable or what the right thing to do here. I'm not sure if there is a real threat which I know is a common saying for folks suffering from OCD but I have to admit I am lost here and would appreciate any advice.

Thanks for the response, this indeed makes sense. I'm trying to remind myself that even though I have a thought it doesn't mean that it's true.

Hey there everyone I'm posting to discuss this new obsession of mine that started that I am having some trouble with. I'm looking for any advice or tips as this theme is particularly troubling for me. Some quick background on me I've been suffering form OCD for a long time now and have seen a therapist, been on medication ect and have been doing alright until this theme hit me like truck recently. Basically the town I live in here in the United Sates was the site of a chemical fire at a hazardous waste facility back in 2006. Some more details here https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a1141/4206282/. I actually have a vivid memory of being woken up in the middle of the night by my parents to evacuate due to the hazardous smoke plume along with pretty much everyone else in the town. I have not thought about this incident much until very recently and of course my OCD latched onto this event and has given me contamination fears. Essentially what I fear is that the responders and firefighters from that fire became contaminated along with their equipment and spread particles or elements of that hazardous waste across the town. One way this theme has been troubling for me is that I basically have stopped jogging or walking around my neighborhood due to the fear of touching firehydrants that equipment from this event may have come in contact with. I have sort of fear of coming into contact with the "chemicals" essentially. This is has been a hard post to write as deep down I know this seems crazy and not something that should be worried about. I also realize of course to has been nearly 20 years since this event happened and the amount of people that have touched fire hydrants or other things that firefighters or their equipment may have touched are probably doing extremely well. In fact I believe the original site of the fire is a daycare now if I remember correctly. Even though of course deep down I doubt the validity of my fears due the nature of OCD of course I have very high anxiety about this and continue to things such as avoid fire hydrants. This theme may be be especially hard to deal with due to it being based off of an actually harmful event that happened and when I think about it my mind jumps to cases where towns and their people are poisoned by companies and their waste and pollution. Although every case is different and I try to remind myself that the proper authorities have taken care of this chemical fire and signed off on it. I think I just have to hope they took the proper precautions and protocols to not spread any potential hazardous waste but of course at the moment this seems very hard to do. Anyways just wanted to get my thoughts about this down, and I appreciate any input on this current OCD theme that has latched onto me.