OCD with handwashing and soap

Post Reply New Topic

I have had this issue since I was a child in that I kept getting all sorts of viral infections, especially colds, flus and viral gastroenteritis. I built up a big fear from the probably over 100 viral infections that I got by the time I was in my early 20s. One week after my 23th birthday when I was studying in the UK, I caught viral gastroenteritis which destroyed me for about two weeks. Since then, I have always washed my hands vigourously with soap for long periods of time. Often much more than just ten seconds, sometimes one minute or even five minutes. Almost always with warm or hot water. I get very anxious when I am in a place with no soap in the toilets, such as public toilets or toilets in certain restaurants.

However, since I washed my hands obsessively like this I have caught much less viral infections of any type. However, my hands are often semi-scalded, sometimes with cuts due to the basic solution of the soap. So basically it is one bad traded for another bad. Does anyone have this type of OCD due to past painful experiences? I want to continue my streak of having avoided viral infections much more than before, but I want to stop scalding my hands in the process. As well as paying very high water bills.

I do this too. I went through therapy called exposure and response prevention. It helped a lot but not totally.

I used to have this issue as a very young kid. A car battery in the garage had leaked sulfuric acid on a bench top and I accidentally chemically burned my hands with it. I became scared of things that contained acids, such as batteries, as they might cause another burn on my skin. So I started hand washing any time I suspected an acid might have leaked. This continued for months until my hands were raw from the constant exposure to water. My parents broke me of the habit by teaching me about acids and which ones could burn skin. I also learned how to neutralize an acid spill using sodium carbonate. After I learned that, I no longer feared acids and stopped obsessing over washing my hands. Funny as it seems now, I do not blink an eye to dip my hands in strong acid baths if I have them properly protected with the right types of gloves. I even work with an acid that will dissolve precious metals occasionally.

The key to breaking the obsession is to find what caused the obsession in the first place and overcome that reason. In my case, it was an irrational fear of acids. Not every obsession can be done this way, but it did work for me.

I do

Hand cream helps with keeping your hands from looking like you've been in a fight.

You could carry soap with you to public places; just a small piece that'll go unnoticed in your pocket.

Right techniques with spreading the soap and washing it off is better than washing too long. Read those up.

I do this too unfortunately regardless if with soap or hand sanitizer.

I was going to suggest you use hand sanitizer some or as much as possible instead of soap and water. Most sanitizers now come with moisturizers which should help. But that is pretty much a band-aid; you still need to work on lessening the obsession.

I do it too, I clean some stuff I dropped on the floor, I clean with Clorox wipes, if I dropped my remote controls, my iPhone, my iPad or stylus for my iPad. I also clean my door knobs, my light switches too. I hardly get sick. I have to be careful anyway, I have Psoriasis too. I have hand sanitizer in my purse.

I have germophobia I think mainly cause my father I live with has such bad hygiene/food safety handling skills that I just see everything contaminated with the germs he spreads around. Unlike my other areas of OCD hoarding and checking which I've been able to overcome with ERP CBT, germophobia is persistent because the source of the anxiety has some basis in reality where as checking a light switch 10 times to prevent my house from burning down or keeping papers that I will never need or if I did would never be able to find them had no rational reason to exist. It is a daily struggle that I still use CBT and ACT to work through but it never fully goes away. I also fear getting sick, and my hygiene has helped lessen the frequency of infections where as checking light switches accomplished nothing.

I have OCD associated with possibility of infection, which I would name as severe. In childhood I did not have it. It started few years ago, when I was about 22 - 25 years old. I have no experience with infection due to lack of handwashing or washing with soap. I think that I just became more conscious some years ago and so I have "fear" of germs or viruses. When I was younger (for example when I was on the studies when I was about 19 - 23 years old) I did not think about possibility of infection, although I have OCD symptoms since childhood (since being about 7 years old (but that time they were not so numerous) and when I was about 13 - 15 years old I had controlling compulsions associated with magical thinking, after that I had religious OCD and was diagnosed with OCD when I was about 17, since when I take medications for it. I have also religious fear of unclean things like pig (although it is not considered forbidden by Catholics).

Now I really often wash palms and different items with soap. I may do not look at that as OCD, but as carefulness, something which is logical. Almost all other people do not wash hands after touching shoes by hand, but I may have fear associated with not doing it.

My OCD becomes worse and worse with age, I think.

I have this problem during high stress points of my life. When I'm under high-stress, I get sensory-sensitivity & sensory-overload to about everything. Like anything touching my body is too much for me to handle and I need to wash it off of me (even if it's not really on me anymore). The solution for me was to fix whatever the underlying stressful environment was (it might not be related to the hand-washing/sensory-sensitivity).