How would you go about addressing this ERP?

[canigetawitness]

Everytime I walk past the kitchen or bathroom, I get intrusive thoughts that I'm going to run over and smear a significant amount of soap on myself. I also get these thoughts before bed. Is it best to leave them alone or actually smear a lot of soap on myself all the time for ERP?

[MothFir]

My guess is that you should not put soap on yourself in response to the thoughts. You would do that if it made you feel contaminated, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think that trying to accept but not respond to the thoughts (through ruminating, pushing them away, or whatever) is the approach you want.

[canigetawitness in reply to MothFir]

Ok thanks, I'll try to do that.

[DeathtoOCD]

It sounds like the best way would be to stand near the bathroom/ kitchen and let yourself feel the anxiety or thoughts and wait for it to pass, but what are you afraid of if you did smear yourself with soap, what are you trying to avoid or stop by not doing it.

[canigetawitness in reply to DeathtoOCD]

It's more like if I DON'T smear myself with soap, I'm afraid something bad will happen. So that's why I'm always worrying that I've smeared myself with soap because i constantly feel like I need to be.

[DeathtoOCD in reply to canigetawitness]

So, it's more like you feel "contaminated" if you don't go smear soap on you? Or is it something else?

[canigetawitness in reply to DeathtoOCD]

It's kind of a long story, but the best way I can describe it is this:

At the end of 2019 I was taking a shower. After washing & rinsing, I got the initial thought "What if there's still some soap left on you & you forgot to rinse it off?" As a compulsion, I re-rinsed twice. This lasted for maybe 10-15 seconds.

The above occurance has triggered me and now I'm caught in a loop of figuring out to go back and properly overcome it with therapy.

The OCD cycle is now as follows & the initial obsession/compulsion is no longer present.

1. "Since I had the initial thought above ^ , that means you need to pump & rub a large amount of soap on your body after you shower, don't rinse it off & habituate to it for exposure therapy."

Compulsion: Mentally review/ruminate/research what the exposure method ought to be.

2. "Now there might be a large amount of soap rubbed on your body because you might have followed through with those instructions/urges & done the above for 'exposure' ."

Compulsion: Re-rinse with water

(#1 & #2 are basically conjoined thoughts now)

3. "Letting myself experience the original obsession & not perform the compulsion isn't sufficient enough. You need to be doing an extra exposure to overcorrect/amplify the initial obsession/compulsion or else you're avoiding an exposure."

Compulsion: Mentally trying to figure out what to do, guilt about potentially not doing therapy properly.

I constantly ruminate about what's OCD and what's not & what needs to be addressed. I feel that if I'm bothered by something (ex. putting a large amount of soap on me & not taking it off, rubbing soap on TV, leaving shoelaces loose), this automatically makes it OCD. My mind scans for anything that could potentially be OCD. Prefer it this way? OCD. Dislike that? OCD. Bothered by that? OCD. And I fear what's me vs. the disorder at work and vice versa. For example, since I double checked to see if soap was left on me that one time, does this mean I have OCD about soap? What exposures do I create now? What exposures do I habituate to? How far do I overcorrect the OCD incident that I gave into/will give into in the future? Do I sit with the anxiety? Do I amplify the thought? Do I change the thought to make it more anxiety inducing? How much soap do I need to be habituating to on myself? Is soap the obsession or is the obsession obsessing about whether soap is an obsession? And it's these neverending, unsolvable questions that are creating a lot of distress.

[DeathtoOCD in reply to canigetawitness]

Hmmm, it sounds like it changed overtime, and it honestly sounds liek it might be meta OCD, because it sounds like a lot of it revolves around what to do about the OCD instead on anything specific. Though it might have started out as a contamination OCD, did you go to therapy for it?

[Hidden in reply to canigetawitness]

I admire you for all the things you're trying. I think your OCD is making your attempts at exposures really complicated. It is the "doubting disease," after all. I think a few sessions with an OCD-specialist therapist might give you some clarity and a way to move forward instead of just spinning. Best of luck!!