When I Decided To Not Wash My Hands That One Time
My OCD takes on various faces. It comes and goes with time but one thing has been pretty consistent over the past couple of years, handwashing and cleanliness. It's a constant fight of telling myself it's fine, I don't need to wash my hands, they're not dirty, I didn't do anything wrong, and so on.
Normally I would give in to these thoughts because I either did not want to get sick or die or get someone else sick, etc. But one day I decided you know what? F*ck this! I'm not giving in, I will suffer all day being worried and anxious but at the end of the day, it will be fine. And well, it ended up being fine but boy oh boy was it the hardest day ever.
When I get anxious I sweat absolute buckets and my heart races a mile a minute. That was what happened all day. Not only did I have the physical symptoms but I was having the mental symptoms as well. My mind was spiraling, going a mile a minute on what could happen, how awful of a person I was, and how I should just give in. But I told myself no, no I will not because this is not the end of the world, which is a common thing I tell myself during this time, "this is not the end of the world".
Although it was such a hard day, it got better, and waking up the next day it hardly bothered me. Sometimes it's the hardest thing to not give in to your OCD triggers and sometimes it's a bit easier. This time it was hard but keeping at it will make it much easier and writing your thoughts down and drawing out the situation can help you see that you know what, it's going to be okay it isn't that bad after all. But this takes a lot of time and is not easy.
I'm still working on it.
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