contamination

[margarita!]

I visited the GP yesterday and sit on a chair in her office while we were discussing my medication. My main OCD theme is contamination, and using that chair has been a massive trigger since yesterday. I can't stop thinking of how many SICK people have used that chair before me, how many GERMS there were that I've brought back into my house...

I'm meeting a friend later this evening. The constant thought in my mind is: "I'm not wearing the same jacket I was wearing yesterday, it just has so many germs on it. I'm not taking the same bag either."

Deep down, I know what I am supposed to do. But how do I bring myself to do it??

 

[daja]

I know the feeling.

Edited March 24, 2018 by daja

[PolarBear]

You just do it. Throw caution to the wind and wear the same clothes. You can't beat this until you stand up to it.

[paradoxer]

margarita, remember, OCD is the worst contaminant of all.

[snowbear]

9 hours ago, margarita! said:

Deep down, I know what I am supposed to do. But how do I bring myself to do it??

So easy to say, but harder to do...

1. You stop buying into the belief your fear of contamination is valid. (Cognitive work.) 

2. You grit your teeth and start applying 'what you know you need to do' even though you still have doubts. (Behavioural work.)

After you've done both the cognitive and behavioural work you gradually start to realise the truth of it - your contamination fears really had no validity and you were right to stop treating them as if they had. 

In short - grit your teeth and push through the doubts. 

[legalseagull]

Hope I'm not hijacking your post Margarita! but the advice from snowbear has really got me thinking. After lots of CBT I still believe my fear of contamination is valid. I feel like I'm falling at the first hurdle.

How do people like me and Margarita! Stop believing our contamination fears are valid?

[snowbear]

9 hours ago, legalseagull said:

After lots of CBT I still believe my fear of contamination is valid. I feel like I'm falling at the first hurdle.

How do people like me and Margarita! Stop believing our contamination fears are valid?

I empathise. That's where I got stuck for 40 years. Even though my rational brain knew it was nonsense, at some 'gut' level I still believed the contamination was real and couldn't quite bring myself to let go of the 'need' to stay uncontaminated. 

What helped me was cognitive work around understanding what the contamination represented for me. Nothing to do with clean and dirty (nor with good vs evil and justice/injustice as I explained my mental contamination to people for decades.)

When I got to the root of it 'contamination' turned out to be my personal way of expressing negative emotion. 

Armed with that knowledge I was then able  to pause when I got the feeling things were contaminated (or felt fear at being exposed to contamination) and ask myself which emotion I was feeling (anger, anxiety, shame, guilt - sometimes more than one!) At first it was't easy to accept an emotion was driving the OCD thinking, because it felt as if the thinking came first and the emotion followed. But with a bit of practise patterns emerged and the emotions in the driving seat became easier to recognise. 

More cognitive work followed on learning how to deal with these perfectly normal, healthy emotions like normal people deal with them instead of resorting to my skewed OCD thinking which tries to avoid unpleasant emotion by interpreting the 'bad' feeling as contamination and danger.

Now when I get thoughts/feelings that things are contaminated I understand what's really going on in my head. I understand that I'm interpreting an unpleasant emotion as 'this is contaminated, this feels risky.'  I can let go of the contamination interpretation and instead deal with the actual emotion (and whatever problem caused the emotion to be there.)

The result is my days are now filled with normal events and normal emotions (some positive some negative) which are perfectly manageable in normal, rational ways.   When 'contamination thinking' reappears it's my red flag that I'm not dealing with my emotions, but am back on my OCD interpretation which enables me to avoid the emotion. 

Your individual interpretation and what contamination represents for you may be the same or different. You need to work out what it means for you. Then you can challenge the validity of it in a rational way. 

[legalseagull]

Thank you for taking the time to give a lengthy reply. I'll need to read it several times for it to sink in. What you say makes a lot of sense though. 

I don't think contamination represents anything for me. It's simply the fear (terror) that I'll pick up some germs that will make me vomit. Not sure if this makes it easier or more difficult to deal with.

[snowbear]

11 hours ago, legalseagull said:

I don't think contamination represents anything for me. It's simply the fear (terror) that I'll pick up some germs that will make me vomit. Not sure if this makes it easier or more difficult to deal with.

Oh it always represents something - a thought, a belief, a feeling... 

Ask yourself why you fear vomiting. It could be a fear of dying (catastrophic thinking) or a fear of being unable to control your body (loss of control in general). Or you may uncover a simple belief that you won't cope with the temporary discomfort of an episode of vomiting - which in turn may represent a deeper and more generalised fear of 'Anything out of the ordinary and I won't be able to cope.'  Such a belief would keep anybody in a hyper-vigilant state to avoid even minor inconveniences like throwing up, because their brain is interpreting the temporary illness as a major threat to general survival. 

Of course it's nonsense - you know would cope just fine -  so your first instinct may be to dismiss the idea you even have such a belief. But consider the possibility that your mind is reacting to challenges (such as infection and vomiting) AS IF it was true that you wouldn't cope. 

It's often not clear to us what the deeper issues driving our thoughts and behaviour are. This is where a good therapist can guide you through the cognitive stuff, helping you to uncover what core beliefs your brain is reacting to (as opposed to what you are consciously aware of thinking.) 

[legalseagull]

Oh wow, now it's really making sense. I think for me it's the lack of control and believing I can't cope. Thank you so much.

[orange]

Interesting way of looking at it snowbear.

I have contamination OCD and struggle a lot with it. When I am able to ignore a compulsion it feels reckless and good at the same time. If you consider that you are just wearing a jacket, not licking the chair in the GP's office then maybe you can think of the jacket as not too much of a big deal? Or that other people sit in medical office chairs and then don't worry about their clothes (although they might wash their hands after being in a hospital). It helps me when I see people put their bags on the floor, etc., something I don't want to do, but then I see what 'normal' behaviour is. Although I still don't want to do it - lol - I might one day.

[lonely mum]

Im so grateful for coming across this thread.  I have contamination OCD too and just recently (finally) I had an 'interview' with a psychologist who told me that because of the current issues in my life my contamination OCD has flared up but that there is no point in doing exposures because the root cause of my OCD needs to be dealt with.  I started having OCD a little while after coming out of an abusive relationship, abuse in every way possible and I have never spoke of it.  She wants me to speak to a domestic violence therapis/professional about what i went through then and only then to deal with the exposures and whatever else.  My be this is what you mean also Snowbear about dealing with the actual issue?

[Isthisreality]

1 hour ago, lonely mum said:

Im so grateful for coming across this thread.  I have contamination OCD too and just recently (finally) I had an 'interview' with a psychologist who told me that because of the current issues in my life my contamination OCD has flared up but that there is no point in doing exposures because the root cause of my OCD needs to be dealt with.  I started having OCD a little while after coming out of an abusive relationship, abuse in every way possible and I have never spoke of it.  She wants me to speak to a domestic violence therapis/professional about what i went through then and only then to deal with the exposures and whatever else.  My be this is what you mean also Snowbear about dealing with the actual issue?

I would be extremely surprised if snowbear's advice applied on your situation would lead to that conclusion. 

I have no  knowledge about your therapist but i would run (ok this is overdramatic - but i would researched him/her) Not saying you shouldn't talk about your past to someone. I mean you have contamination-obsessions, or atleast that is what you have been writing about since 2014, and now do you need to talk about the past (which is fine), before you can start doing exposure-therapy. Please don't tell me that this psychologist is fund of psychodynamics

Edited March 28, 2018 by Isthisreality

[snowbear]

56 minutes ago, lonely mum said:

She wants me to speak to a domestic violence therapis/professional about what i went through then and only then to deal with the exposures and whatever else.  My be this is what you mean also Snowbear about dealing with the actual issue?

Not exactly what I meant, lonely mum, but it's a near enough approximation for your purposes at the stage you're at.  

So yes, DO go talk to someone about the abuse you suffered, that's a necessary step of its own regardless of whether your domestic situation is what lies behind your OCD or not.  

After you've dealt with the 'real life' issues, it may be clearer what your OCD represents for you. It could be like mine (also related to abuse and trauma) that your OCD represents the emotions you suppressed during the abuse, or you may find you dealt with that with a different coping mechanism and your OCD represents the difficulties of dealing with your newfound freedom and that's why it started just after - or it might not be related at all and just coincidental timing. You won't know until you start stripping back the layers of thinking and look at it more closely. For complex issues like this that's best done, step by step, under the guidance of a therapist. Start out without any assumptions and see what gets uncovered rather than going into it looking for a link. 

You can deal with OCD alongside or after the trauma therapy. You don't say what your contamination fears are about (no need to if you don't want), but have a read of this link and see if you think it applies to you or not. Mental contamination. Or you may have 'direct contamination' fears (the 'standard' OCD fear of dirt/germs people think of when you mention contamination.) When you come to do exposure therapy it's important to be aware there's a difference in the kind of exposures you do for the two types, even though the principle of CBT is exactly the same. But cross that bridge when you come to it!

I'm pleased you've found someone you can talk to and that you've been listened to. Your journey to a better life has begun. Good luck.  

[paradoxer]

On 3/25/2018 at 03:04, legalseagull said:

Hope I'm not hijacking your post Margarita! but the advice from snowbear has really got me thinking. After lots of CBT I still believe my fear of contamination is valid. I feel like I'm falling at the first hurdle.

How do people like me and Margarita! Stop believing our contamination fears are valid?

Concede the fact that they just might be valid - and move on.

In terms of motivation, ... said 'OCD sufferer' might be the least contaminated,  most ethical (here, fill in the blanks) ... person in the world, but they never really lived a life. Why? Because they were a prisoner to OCD.  Live is too short, don't let a stupid disorder steal yours. 

[taurean]

Contamination is a theme of OCD, a manifestation. Irrespective of manifestation OCD operates in a similar fashion. 

It can make us "want to believe"  that 2+2=5, even though we are advised it doesn't. 

Our fear of its core belief suggests catastrophic consequence. 

We have to learn to accept we are worrying about the fear being real, rather than it actually being real - and we do this through CBT, also learning through the therapy to ignore doubt and demands for certainty. 

We do deliberately what our brain is telling us not to - and realise there is no adverse consequence. 

The threat is disarmed, the urge to avoid and carry out compulsions is shown to be a sham. 

That's how to do it. At the start it is enormously difficult;  then we cross a boundary and it becomes a whole lot easier. 

Sadly many people give up before reaching that boundary beyond which it becomes easier. 

Edited March 29, 2018 by taurean
typo