People fear blood because they associate it with being sick, contagious, unlovable, incapable of being around others, ashamed and rejected from society. It is also true that at some point, we draw a line in the sand and we say, enough. In the end, only acceptance of some level of uncertainty will allow the OCD to be diminished.
After all, if you are seeing blood outside of the body, it usually means something is wrong.
What’s worse, compulsions simultaneously provide temporary relief from unwanted thoughts and feelings.
Similarly, if a thought about blood is present in the mind, mindfulness enables you to see it for what it is, a thought about blood.
It exposes a patient to what they are afraid of, to spike their anxiety, but stops them performing the compulsive acts they would usually employ to make themselves feel better. It is good public health advice, of course.
“On my way out I would accidentally brush against the door handle. While that is a common and important area of attention for those interested in understanding OCD, the obsession with bodily fluids may warrant more attention.
He traces it back to a remark from a family member that he wasn’t washing his hands properly. What about a simple walk in the park where you might brush up against a sharp plant… or step on a discarded band-aid? In the 1960s and 70s there was a spike in irrational fears of asbestos, just as the dangers of the material had come to popular attention. Mindfulness practice would entail noticing the feeling of contamination and allowing it to be there, as a feeling, without making compulsive attempt to eliminate it. Exposure with response prevention works by bringing up the unwanted thought (through exposure to triggers) and practicing resisting the compulsive response. These individuals can have an underlying fear that contact with the contaminant may cause illness or death to themselves or others, or simply be so unpleasant “they will not cope”.
Chiefly, the spike in anxiety about the virus can fuel existing obsessive fears of contamination and trigger destructive compulsive actions. It spirals out of control pretty easily, with each new avoidance sending the message to the brain that death was narrowly escaped, prompting further, more indirect reasons for avoidance. For contamination-related OCD, that response prevention frequently involves getting them to not wash their hands, sometimes for days on end.
If you have any comments or queries feel free to contact us at blog@anxietyhouse.com.au, Mental contamination in obsessive-compulsive disorder, http://psychcentral.com/lib/ocd-symptoms-of-contamination-fears/00010583/2, http://iocdf.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Contamination-Fact-Sheet.pdf, http://www.ocdla.com/blog/ocd-thought-action-fusion-1790, © Copyright 2017 Anxiety House Brisbane | Disclaimer | Privacy Policy | Cancellation Policy. It is important to stress that, as long as it is not excessive, handwashing to minimise the risk of coronavirus spread from other people is a rational response to a genuine threat. What about sex?
Sophie is passionate about anxiety recovery and loves to write about research and provide EDUCATION about anxiety. Mental contamination OCD shares some similar characteristics to contact contamination OCD in that the compulsive behaviours involved in each, are associated with strong emotions of anxiety and guilt, that invoke intense urges to wash and engage in excessive cleaning rituals in order to soothe and alleviate their distressing thoughts and psychological feelings of ‘dirtiness’. When a person comes in contact with something they feel is contaminated, they have an opportunity to stop and take a look at what is going on inside. People will also think I did something pretty awful to get the disease in the first place and that is the only story that will ever be told about me.”.
“The key issue is the function,” he says. It is the virus that causes AIDS, it is incurable (as of this writing), and it is loaded with all kinds of stigma and misconceptions. A major clue is how much of your life you are willing to sacrifice for your fear. Employing mindfulness skills can be an integral part of revealing distorted thinking and compulsive urges. Why not try a free 15 minute telephone consultation. It is what it is. Just to be sure? In the 1920s, doctors in the US reported a surge in what they called syphilis-phobia, which coincided with a campaign to highlight the dangers of the disease. Orthorexia – Anxiety about “Health & Fitness”, Anxiety and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Fear of using public amenities, laundromats, transport, or telephones for fear of contracting germs from others, Fear and avoidance of eating out or eating food prepared by others, or using the cutlery or cooking utensils of others for fear of contracting food poisoning or germs, Avoiding public spaces involving large crowds of people for fear of increased risk of germs, Fear of hospitals, doctors surgeries, or other areas that are associated with illness or blood, Fear of tooth decay/ mouth disease developing after eating particular foods- resulting in excessive tooth-brushing, Excessive cleaning of kitchen or bathroom for fear of bacteria spreading to themselves or others, Fear of shaking hands or coming into close contact with others (eg: hugging or kissing), Fear of being contaminated in a ‘magical’ way via contact with the names of illnesses, disabled people, pictures, or names of people perceived as having serious injuries, diseases, or fatal illnesses, Fear of ‘catching’ bad luck from contact with unlucky numbers or objects associated with negative events, Fearing and/or avoiding images or sounds that may provoke the memory of the person or interaction or situation, Fearing /avoiding particular words or phrases or places that may trigger the memory or association of the situation that caused them mental harm, Unable to say what contaminant they are afraid of just that they “feel disgusted”, Increased ‘Thought Action Fusion’ – meaning “If I think of a certain thought I may pollute myself”, Attributing high levels of personal responsibility for the memory or imagined scenario associated with dirt or disgust – thereby invoking feelings of shame, embarrassment, guilt, and/ or anger, Ten years’ experience with clients with OCD and anxiety, Worked in public and private sectors for many years, Worked in acute inpatient and outpatients units, Regular speaker on radio and social media, Researcher and presenter at international conferences. Yes, all symptoms and diagnoses from A to Z and everything in between has a spiritual and metaphysical explanation. In some cases, it is just a way to find comfort, to ease the mental burden of irrational obsessions that a loved one might die, or that something dreadful will happen to them. I have known clients to burn their clothes, spend hours showering, hours checking their body for cuts, abandon groceries in the parking lot of the supermarket, abandon entire locations (including their own home) for fear of blood contamination. Chiefly, the spike in anxiety about the virus can fuel existing obsessive fears of contamination and trigger destructive compulsive actions. What about shaking hands when you meet someone? The process depletes the immune system, resulting in a gradual deterioration of health, the final stages of which is called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). HIV is the boogeyman of health anxiety.
What this means is that nobody wants to be the cautionary tale or the first person made famous by getting a terrible disease from casual contact with blood. There are also various medication options that may be beneficial for some individuals when used in conjunction with therapy. While there are various forms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), this article will focus on one category known as contamination OCD, and the similarities and distinct differences between its two subcategories – contact contamination OCD and mental contamination OCD.
bottom of shoes), Avoidance of people associated (accurately or inaccurately) with blood contact or blood-related illnesses (i.e. The answer is a combination of cognitive and behavioral treatment strategies that together define cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Disgust is a feeling, and like all feelings, it cannot be relied upon for factual information about danger. In some cases, Veale says, the coronavirus threat could bring on OCD for the first time. It is true that we should be well-informed about our health and take precautions to reduce the likelihood of harm from preventable illnesses.
It wasn’t just me. So guidance to do so regularly is reviving their anxieties – and triggering them in others, Fri 13 Mar 2020 15.20 GMT The internal voice that says “ewww” is also saying “run away.” Normally, this would not pose much of a problem, unless you felt you needed certainty that you were far enough away. If coronavirus continues to spread, experts expect related cases of OCD to spike as well. If the concern of getting a blood-borne illness is about being isolated from the people you love, incapable of enjoying relationships, work, daily life, then why let OCD create that very same environment with avoidance and other compulsions? Individuals who develop contact contamination OCD, typically experience an overwhelming feeling of distress, discomfort or a sensation of uncleanliness, when they come into physical contact with substances, objects, people or animals, that are viewed as ‘contaminants’ (usually containing germs, dirt, disease, bodily waste, secretions, or toxic chemicals). Mental contamination and traumatic experiences. If I say don’t think about blood, it will have the same effect as me saying not to think about a tap-dancing giraffe! The problem, however, is that compulsions fail to guarantee success. Importantly, these fears are highly disproportionate to realistic probabilities and expectations. Among the more common manifestations of blood-focused OCD is an obsession with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
For Jacob Rees-Mogg, it’s the national anthem. Unlike contact contamination, mental contamination may not require a visual trigger– this can make it difficult for the individual who experiences the distressing thoughts and compulsions to pin point the cause, for it may be on a subconscious level. (Full disclosure: as the former environment correspondent for this newspaper, I used to write those stories.). In 2012, Australian scientists reported the first cases of OCD in people who fixate on thoughts about climate change – a bogeyman for the new millennium and one that, like HIV in the 1980s, poses an uncertain, universal threat, depicted in lurid detail by the mass media.
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