Handwashing is the worst part of my ocd. To a certain degree, I am ok with avoiding touching things and going to only certain stores and whatever. But the way my ocd has convinced me that my sink is contaminated and that I must have touched it while washing my hands and that the tiny drops of water splashing up from the basin must be spreading the contamination and on and on has taken over so much of my time and effort! And it doesnt stop there – no! [br] [br] Because of all that, I do my best to avoid having to wash my hands except after using the restroom. That means anything with cooking, cleaning, whatever! Ive found ways to get around this or my boyfriend helps, but still, it just sucks! [br] [br] So Ive been working on exposure therapy with this and making progress! I even was finally able to just wash once, almost “normally”, and not do any rituals for the first time in almost a year! I even kept it up for almost a week, with about a 50% success rate of no rituals – thats good considering how tough this one is for me. [br] [br] So tonight, something got on my hand at the grocery store, so I used a WetWipe when I got home cuz we were making dinner and I didnt want to risk delaying that with a handwash session. But the wipes have a perfumy scent that I dont like, so when I used the bathroom later, I took a little extra soap. Heres where my sink gets evil…. [br] [br] If you use too much soap, the suds will go down the drain but then come back up the pipes and out the overflow hole at the back of the sink basin, directly beneath the faucet, right where your hands are! Gross! But also, to me, completely contaminated! And theres air going thru there too somehow, so the suds expand and grow and the bubbles pop and then it all slides down to the drain again to feed itself and continue. Its horrible! Like its alive or something…. [br] [br] I had been very good about not using too much soap so that wouldnt happen. But tonight it did! I guess I was too complacent and rinsed too quick and so the suds came out the back! I had only been brave enough to do erp with the sink after having my BF clean it first. I havent cleaned it since then, but now that the suds backed up, I feel like its more contaminated and now I need to do another round of erp. (My contamination fears are both germs and other stuff that cant be cleaned, so cleaning the sink first only took care of the germ part. The other part is the scarier part to me) [br] [br] Sorry for the long rant, but I was sooo happy to finally be conquering this ritual and starting to get my freedom back and then this F#&$@ing sink with the stupidest drain design ever has to win again! Ive never seen this happen except when doing dishes in a double sink. It shouldnt happen with a normal bathroom sink and 1.5 pumps of regular handsoap! And Im mad at myself for not being more careful while rinsing – if you do it little by little, the suds cant build up. But really, should I have to be that careful? Its not like I was using a ton of soap! [br] [br] And Im mad cuz I wont have time to do an exposure with it until this weekend cuz of family plans (which are also gonna be big exposure tests for me – wish me luck!), so I have a few days of sink hell to look forward to. And begging my BF to clean the sink and having him roll his eyes at me and complain about me. Ugh! [br] [br] Other than that, I hope everyone had a happy Halloween!