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Contaminating things


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Hi everyone. You may or may not remember me from my constant posts. I was actually in residential treatment here in the states for about 1 month, until I was kicked out by insurance. Now I'm back home, but I'm trying to continue the stuff I was doing there in hopes of maintaining my gains and getting over this silly mental contamination thing, that has hindered my life so much for the past 1 and 1/2 years, once and for all. I will probably return to therapy but for now I have good momentum and I will see how far I can get.

Basically, if I'm worried my notebook is contaminated by intrusive thoughts and want to throw it out, to say to myself that it's not really contaminated, or I wasn't really aroused by the incestuous intrusive thought (that's my fear) would both be self-reassurance, right? 

The hospital's approach was a little more flexible than my former therapist's, who wanted me to agree with every thought. They threw in some cognitive stuff, for example saying "This is a typical OCD challenge for me" instead of "That's not me, it's my OCD." 

I find that I've been saying to myself "I probably was aroused by that" and then continuing on, and making sure I say to myself "That notebook really is contaminated".

I'm going to keep going, and hopefully in a month or two this symptom will have really subsided.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update: I already got sidetracked. A particularly bad thought came up and contaminated my notebook. I have not thrown it out yet, but I probably haven't done any ERP in a week because of it. Need to try and get back on track. 

My OCD is telling me to throw out this notebook and go back in the book I'm reading to undo the contamination, then rethink the thought and continue. Thinking maybe I could continue ERP from there successfully. But it's never a good idea to give into a compulsion.

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2 hours ago, Ryukil said:

Update: I already got sidetracked. A particularly bad thought came up and contaminated my notebook. I have not thrown it out yet, but I probably haven't done any ERP in a week because of it. Need to try and get back on track. 

My OCD is telling me to throw out this notebook and go back in the book I'm reading to undo the contamination, then rethink the thought and continue. Thinking maybe I could continue ERP from there successfully. But it's never a good idea to give into a compulsion.

I can sympathise I sold my last iPad and camera due to contamination fears and was ready to sell the replacement 

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