Now that I have recently joined this group I have been feeling much less alone in my OCD. I have always told my mom that it makes me feel alone even when I am with people cause I am sometimes in my own OCD world.
Anyway there is something that I wanted to run by everyone. I’ve had lots of types of OCD but for the past few years it has been feeling contaminated and having all the rituals that come along with that. I had a very bad bought with germ and HIV fear which is calming down now. The one that still remains seems very silly and seems to make absolutely no sense….
Basically I feel contaminated by certain foods. I am not scared that they have germs in them but rather that the smell of them is all over my hands. I fear if I don’t wash and get the smell off it will be all over my bed. The control of my bed seems to be the main theme in many of my contamination issues. I am only scared of being “contaminated “because I don’t want to be contaminated from my body.
Anyway I was just dying to run this by everyone because I have never heard of this and it makes me feel so weird. When I saw a specialist who has been practicing for years I even shocked him. All my other symptoms he had heard a million times.
More info is that my obsession with food and also feeling contaminated by scents all began about 6 years ago when I temporally lost my sense of smell from intensely cleaning the bathroom floor with Clorox clean up. Ever since then it makes me nervous to breathe in. I feel like maybe I had some permanent loss and I am damaged.
Sorry I can tend to ramble a bit. I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this or has experienced it themselves. Or does anyone else have some other unique symptoms. Also of course in writing this I fear I will give another OCD person this symptom but I am hoping that in putting this out there I can get over my hyper responsibility issues too.
Thanks for the advice girl wisdom. For a while I was replacing but with other obessesions. I will give what you said a try. I have thinking about doing more positive activities like taking an art class. Hopefully this will help a bit.
Thanks paula, I have been doing some searches desperately trying to find my obsession so I don’t feel so strange. The closest I could find was “irrational fear of some foods" I guess that’s kinda me. I was thinking "oh no everyone is going to think I’m crazy cause they have not heard of my obsession”. Yes I was being obsessive…lol. Its kinda ironic. I guess its all the same though and ocd can take any form it wants. Its new for me speaking out but I think it is healthy.
Dear Flower,
My opinion is that we develop the kinds of ocd that we develop in response to and extreme fear that we are left with when the incident is over. Your chlorox bleach incident is a perfect example. You were using a super agent for cleaning, probably didn’t have enough ventallation to make it safe to use it as you did. Result: shock to your olfactory (smell) system. It may have even impacted on some of the nervesleading from the nose to the brain. When your sense of smell retuned, it returned altered, now you are supersensitive to certain smells and this trigger you fears, (whether consciously or subconciosly) that you will lose your sense of smell again. Since this is what I think and I am not a doctor, I haven’t a clue how you will resolve this, I also suggest that you read all labels very carefully before you use them because you may inadvertantly cause yourself harm if you do not. Commercial agents are full of dangerous chemical agents. I would suggest you use vinigar as a disinfectant instead of chlorox.
Thank ancientgreek. That is a very good point about how that incent left me with extreme fear. I was so scared when my sense smell was gone. And you are right I had almost no ventilation and I was spraying sooo much. I try now to not use this stuff especially in unhealthy ways. I must admit though that I sometimes give in and buy it. It’s so hard learning the right way to clean. How to do it with out thinking I am "decontaminating".