Obsessive Reaction to Lice: Any Advice?

[emeraldleaf]

I recently started working with younger students every so often. I was already aware of how often germs get transmitted and was practicing as much personal and classroom hygiene as possible, but after finding out one of my students is an avid hugger the though of lice has tortured me all weekend. I've never had direct hair-to-hair contact, but ever since the thought has inserted itself I find myself with psychosomatic symptoms like itching and tickling all around my head, catastrophic thoughts of spreading it and infesting my home and "safe" spaces like my bedroom where I usually decompress from my symptoms on an average day, and feeling compelled to spend money on special lice combs and compulsive combing and checking. I've never been confirmed to have lice during childhood, even when school outbreaks happened, so I don't have any benchmark for what it feels like to truly have it. I keep going in circles to "I only feel itchy when my brain has room to conjure up the symptoms, therefore it's all in my head" from "wait, I just felt a prickle and now I'm thinking about it. If the sensation comes first, do I not actually have it then?"

Unfortunately my high stress had me giving in to buying a lice comb and I'm waiting on its arrival. How do you cope with repetitive thoughts about infestation, especially when it's something you can't always immediately catch with the naked eye? I'm starting to feel sick and frozen in place from the fear and it would mean a lot to hear from people with similar experiences.

[LuvSun]

Hi emeraldleaf - having suffered with OCD most of my life I can relate to how you are feeling. As far as the lice goes you can always have a friend or family member check your hair for lice- I believe they are visible to the naked eye.

[deValentin]

It may be best to ask oneself the following question in order to handle an obsessional fear of getting head lice.

Who would I rather be? The person who is so intent in seeking a zero-risk environment in a narrow domain that he/she is losing sight of the risks in other domains, or the one who isn’t willing to overall make things worse in her life just to appease his/her mind in a narrow domain.

You may have heard of the story of the Greek philosopher who was so absorbed, while walking, in his thinking about the finitude of life, that he didn’t see the well in front of him and fell in it.

Zero-risk bias is a tendency to prefer the complete elimination of risk in a sub-part over alternatives with greater overall risk reduction. It often manifests in cases where decision makers address problems concerning health, safety, and the environment (Wikipedia).