What Is Contamination OCD and How To Overcome It
Does COVID-19 have your contamination OCD in overdrive? It’s hard enough living through a pandemic without adding this subset of OCD to the mix. It’s easy to obsess over contracting a disease when constant reminders surround you, which can trigger overwhelming levels of obsession-compulsion cycles that make it hard to function. Living in fear isn’t healthy and can lead to extreme anxiety, but you aren’t alone. Today, we will be looking at what contamination OCD is and how to cope with contamination OCD.
What is Contamination OCD?
Contamination OCD can be broken down into types of OCD, contact contamination OCD and mental and/or emotional contamination OCD. Contact contamination OCD is when an individual is triggered when they are touching and/or around physical contaminants, such as dirt, bodily fluids, or garbage. Mental or emotional contamination OCD is when one is triggered by gross or disturbing thoughts and they think they’re mentally or emotionally contaminated from their pure state of mind.
Contact Contamination OCD
First. let’s look at common obsessions people with the subset of contact contamination OCD experience. These can be paired with other subsets or experienced alone.
Common Obsessions Include Fear Of:
Germs, dirt, or bodily fluid contamination
Contracting an illness or disease
Spreading an illness or contaminate to others
These contact contamination fears can lead to a host of compulsions in an effort to reduce anxiety and cleanse perceived contaminates away.
Common Compulsions Include:
Excessively cleaning your body and your surroundings
Throwing away or separating items that have been contaminated
Repeatedly changing your clothes
Researching diseases and illnesses you fear
Contact contamination OCD can be easily triggered by leaving your “safe” space, leading to avoiding interacting with people in-person. This is why it’s so important to seek help before you reach this point.
Mental Contamination OCD
As mentioned before, individuals experiencing mental contamination OCD believe they can be contaminated by triggers that are not “right,” such as words, songs, or even people. These individuals believe that being in the presence of these triggers will contaminate their thinking and actions.
Common Obsessions of Mental Contamination OCD Include:
Songs or words that go against an individual’s morals or have caused emotional pain earlier
People that have emotionally harmed the individual
Memories of emotionally scarring events
Thoughts or possible scenarios that would make the individual feel “unclean”
These mental contamination fears can lead to a range of compulsions that briefly alleviate the individual’s anxiety. Such compulsions include:
Mental rituals to purify one of disturbing thoughts
Avoidance of certain people, places, and triggers that can bring up emotional or mental scars
How To Overcome Contamination OCD?
Sating your obsessions or attempting to work around them will only lead to your compulsions growing and affecting your life more and more often.
Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP), one of our tools, is the more beneficial form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy available to get you back on track. Research shows that 80% of patients responded favorably to treatment.
The thought of exposing yourself to a trigger and not allowing yourself to act out your compulsion is stressful to most, but having a therapist to ease you into it and guide your path with ultimately calm your obsessions and give you control of your life back. Many people are shocked at how quickly ERP can help once they commit to improving their symptoms. Having a community where you are understood and have the resources to learn at your own pace can also be a huge help to your journey. That’s why I’ve also created the Mastering OCD Membership service - to give you a place to safely explore and recover. I believe in your recovery from contamination OCD.