Urgent help needed.. I can't take it anymore

Guys, I really need urgent help. I CANNOT STOP STRESSING OVER DAMAGING MY NEW ITEMS.

I recently got a new jacket, and stressed for a WEEK about damaging it. I exchanged it twice.

Now, I'm getting a new car with a leather interior.

And.. I learned hand sanitizer damages leather.

Well, I clean my phone with hand sanitizer (and rinse it..)

I also sometimes wash my hands with hand sanitizer (which I stopped now..)

And I'm absolutely obsessed that me touching my dry phone will give me microscopic hand sanitizer/alcohol on my hands, and I'll immediately damage the leather steering wheel. I'm planning to not touch my phone anymore.. I can't take it.

This IS OCD, right? I really need help on what I should do. I am stressing all the time and may breakdown soon.

OCDPaul wrote:This IS OCD, right?

obviously we can't diagnose here but whether or not you have ocd, it sounds like you're having irrational fears. and intense anxiety. force yourself to stop analyzing and ruminating your irrational thought may help.

OCDPaul wrote:I really need help on what I should do. I am stressing all the time and may breakdown soon.

given your statement, it's time to seek professional help imo. i'm sorry you're struggling but you must help yourself and you need extra support...

Hello!

From what I can see, those are classic symptoms of OCD. Though I have never heard of the fear or obsession of damaging new items. I do get a little anxious about that to, but I always end up get a scratch on something I just got without knowing and find it later.

As for the sanitizer thing. Just reassure yourself and have faith in the items microscopic structural integrity. In other words, your car can handle a little wear. So long as you aren't putting the sanitizer direct on anything. If it's dried onto your hands, it has dried onto your hands. It can't damage anything.

Kinda like paint! When it's wet and it gets on things and dries, that's when it does damage. But if it's dried and flakes off, it just sits there until you swipe off the paint fleck.

Not to worry. You items can take more wear and tear (sorry, that's just a term I needed to use) than you think!

Hope this helped some!

Wow sounds really close to OCD I've gone through, except mine has sorta morphed into a a more 'digital' version of keeping things 'perfect' (like accounts, usernames, data, etc) when it used to always be physical.

I would do the same exact thing as you. Return items or sell them quickly after purchasing, obsess over them not being new or in a 'default' state, and so on.

I haven't even gotten hold of my own problems to be able to give you advice, except to say cognitive behavioral therapy is the key to beating it, and OCD, and there are several good books out there about the thought process to beat it. The main one I've read is by Johnathon Grayson. Although the concept for eating OCD no matter the form is the same, sometimes it's difficult to morph that concept into this particular category. That's the main problem I've had. It's sorta a little bit of each perfectionism, ordering, and cleaning all in one. The grand point is to acclimate yourself to high anxiety of this situation or even it push it to become more anxious and force yourself to be in that situation until the anxiety goes down. Otherwise it spirals down the path you're going on, and I've been on: from one item to the next.

As a kid I used to have basketball cards I would obsess about if were perfect and pick the corners off until I usually eventually just made it worse or destroyed it. The same thing went on with videogames or electronics - not destroying but if there was a small scratch or whatever, then I would sell it or exchange it.

I guess along with the cognitive behavioral therapy the main thing I would say from a logical standpoint that helps me a little bit, is in 100 years we'll all be dead - our atoms will be ash (well mine will be), the items we're talking about will either be in a landfill somewhere or recycled for metal or plastic, and we'll likely have replaced them several times over our lives.

I think the whole 'I'm not keeping this forever so it doesn't have value' line of thinking for me at least reduced some of the anxiety. Good luck, hopefully some of this makes sense, and trust me - I've definitely been feeling your pain and my own brand of similar OCD lately.