Well it started 2 years ago with me being germophobic and led to “ Contamination OCD”.

2021 was the hardest year for me to survive, and when I say survive I mean it. Let me tell you how my mind works.
Everything around looks “red” to me, not by colour but as a sign of danger, a sign of germs by me, by my bed and my cupboard.  So I try my best to keep all my ‘greens’ senitized.

Whenever I touch anything red, my mind would work as if my hands have gotten red and I needed to wash them asap before touching the greens and making them red too. It is like someone is inside my head and continuously trying to order me and threaten me, and this builds up my anxiety. And to get rid of this anxiety, I do things that my mind would order me to do. It would distress me for sometime but it’s almost like I am being compelled by my own mind.

It started happening to me with just a few things at first. Like there were only a few things that signaled red to me but as the time passed, everything turned red and the continuous voice from my mind makes me feel like a slave.

My actions are now my rituals that I perform for hours.

The rituals I perform:

Washing hands over and over again whenever I touch anything.

Bathing for 2 to 2:30 hrs straight thinking I am not yet cleaned up.

I walk through a place over and over again in order to confirm and tell my mind that I haven’t touched anything but ultimately I end up senitizing myself.

Spending hours and hours in order to senitize my surroundings.

The difficulties I face:

Washing my private parts after urination and defecation, led to severe UTI, as the natural flora was disturbed.

Even the thought of having nearly touched the waste bin, for example, is enough to make me doubt that I have touched it, and feel contaminated.

There was this time when I was so much involved in the thoughts of germs that I met with an accident.

Sometimes I keep my hair inside my dress in order to not let it get touched by anything because I can’t senitize my hair, which makes me look weird.

I avoid going anywhere like colleges, get-together, parties which make me feel lonely and leftout.

Now the question arises, why can’t I stop this, even after knowing that what I am doing is not normal. Here is the thing, that is what OCD stands for: *Obsessions are unwanted and intrusive thoughts, feelings, urges and doubts that you can’t control, while compulsions are repetitive physical or mental actions performed in an attempt to relieve distress and anxiety. You get controlled by your fear and compulsion of mind.

How I am dealing with it? As it is said, to get your problems rectified you first need to acknowledge them. Some people go through this OCD for years without realizing it but as soon as I realized that this OCD was destroying me and ruining my life, I went to a Psychiatrist. For the last 6 months, I have been on medication and I am fighting powerfully against my thoughts.
I started working on my health.

Yes, my Psychiatrist is beautifully guiding me and helping me to cope with these thoughts. Things aren’t normal, but they are better.

Mental health is the most important thing yet the most ignored thing in the world. We don’t take it seriously unless it happens to us. Thank you for The Secret.