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Feeling terrible


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Typing this as an alternative to googling/other compulsions, so please bear with me.

I’m an on and off contributor to this forum - I have times when I get my ocd under control and then I have times when it all crashes around me. I’m a teacher in the uk and, for sone reason I can’t work out, these bad periods always seem to coincide with the school holidays. 

Ive been aware that things were spiralling for a few weeks. My ocd is mainly about contamination, particularly blood. I got back to the point where I was waking every morning with anxiety symptoms and my worries were having an impact on my everyday life. Got to the point where I had a really bad migraine yesterday and spent most of the day in bed. 

This morning, I woke feeling positive and determined to get things back on track. I’ve managed this before (with cbt). Decided to have a quiet morning at home - laid on the sofa with a cup of tea and a book and really relaxed. After a couple of hours, I noticed that there was a brownish red stain all over my big toe. Checked and no cuts etc on my foot, so went to investigate. Checked my en suite and found blood on my bath mat that is outside the shower - I must have stepped on it when I got out of the shower this morning. Now, there are two options where this blood came from - my cat has a habit of bringing in mice and eating them on the mat, and my teenage daughter uses my en suite and she has her period at the moment (but she had her shower last night, so I would assume any blood would have dried over night). 

So, I went into a cleaning frenzy in case this was mouse blood, which would carry germs -  of course I had put me feet up in the sofa, so that needed cleaning, but during the morning, I had got up and put all sorts of things on the sofa (handbag, tv remote, phone etc). I’ve stopped now, but I’m not convinced I’ve remembered everything that might have been in contact with the blood. 

Feeling terrible. 

Edited by Chelsie
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Hi Chelsie :)

You need to stop cleaning now. The most cleaning someone without ocd would do, would be to clean off any visible blood. They would assume that if it was blood from a mouse then if is unlikely to be of any real threat and leave it at that. 

Have you thought about looking into CBT again? Refreshing what you learnt the first time can be really helpful and a new therapist might help you get further than the last. 

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Thanks for the reply, Gemma - it helps to know someone is out there listening. 

I have stopped cleaning and have forced myself to sit back on the sofa that I’ve cleaned, using phone, remote control etc. Forcing myself not to do any compulsions, but keep thinking of other things I need to sort out - eg the towel I used this morning, I would have used to dry my feet, so needs fetching and putting in the washing machine. 

Realky suffering with physical symptoms of anxiety - heart pounding, sweating etc, but doing my best. 

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The anxiety you're experiencing is completely normal given all the compulsions and worrying you've been doing. Remember by buying into there being a threat by doing compulsions it's raised the feeling of threat, but it's just a feeling, you don't actually know there's a threat. 

Give yourself time, the anxiety will come down. And really try afterwards to look into how to tackle your OCD. You deserve to not have to worry about all this stuff :)

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I really appreciate what your saying, but on this occasion, it does feel like a real threat. I’m pretty sure mouse blood carries lots of horrible diseases (although I’m resisting the compulsion to google and find out exactly which ones!) 

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24 minutes ago, Chelsie said:

I really appreciate what your saying, but on this occasion, it does feel like a real threat. I’m pretty sure mouse blood carries lots of horrible diseases (although I’m resisting the compulsion to google and find out exactly which ones!) 

Again feels like a real threat. You have jumped to alot of conclusions, firstly you don't know it's mouse blood, secondly even if it is you don't know if the mouse is diseased, thirdly you don't know you have been put at risk from these diseases even if the mouse has one, fourthly who else goes to this level of cleanliness and if they don't why aren't people falling down with mouse diseases all over the place. That's the reasons it's not a real threat.

On top of all that, if you clean more the precedent you set is beyond thinking about. Is every stain that might be mouse blood out and about worth avoiding because of potential risk, by that logic no one should go out ever because there's probably small animal blood all over the place. 

You see this is OCD and you need to take a chance the same chance anyone else would take that the blood whatever it may be is nothing to worry about. 

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Thanks Gemma

I find the hardest thing is that I lose sight of how a normal person would react to the same situation. It’s good to get some perspective. Going to do my best to continue to avoid the compulsions this evening and to have a nice early night, hoping tomorrow will be a better day. 

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Well, not feeling brilliant today. Woke up at 4.30am with anxiety symptoms which were horrible and didn’t abate. Got up and did some jobs, went shopping etc. But felt like I was on high alert all the time. Now home - a couple of compulsions, but generally avoided them. Still feeling rubbish :( 

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Sorry to hear you had such a bad night Chelsie. It's really hard being anxious all the time. You need to start looking into ways to get on top of your problems because unfortunately the more compulsions you do the more days you will have like this. 

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