Anxiety / ocd since flea problem

[Bobb]

I initially posted this in the general anxiety area, however a reply indicated that my post may be better suited here. I know it's a bit long, but I'd really appreciate some support, advice and general insight into my behaviour. Feel like I'm really losing it....

Six weeks ago I had a very small flea infestation in my house. The timing was bad, as I had started some medication about 9 months before that had resulted in social anxiety and paranoia (known side effects of this medication). I'd decided to just live with it as best as I could, as the medication was helping loads in other areas of my health. I got pest control in to fumigate the house immediately and set about doing the necessary washing, cleaning, hoovering required to get on top of the problem. Even though there was no reason to think it hadn't worked (fumigation was a little extreme for the size of the problem), I couldn't get the thought that the house hadn't been sufficiently treated out of my head and so began a pattern of obsessive cleaning/worry. A few weeks later I contacted pest control for advice, as I was convinced that the problem hadn't been resolved. The man was very kind and despite reassuring me that even if he'd missed a spot the chemicals would still be effective on any newly hatched eggs (and last six to seven weeks), he still very kindly redid some areas of the house to put my mind at ease. Unfortunately, this didn't help much (although that night I felt better) and the cleaning regime continued. Fast forward to today.

Me and my children have come to stay a few nights at a friends house,* something that had been organised months ago. I was unsure whether we should have visited due to constant thoughts of spreading 'the problem' to my friends house. I would have cancelled if it was just me, but this was my children's holiday for the year and something that they had been looking forward to, particularly as we were meant to visit in the summer but couldn't go because I had messed up our passports. It's been a tough year for them and the last thing they needed was to have their holiday cancelled because of my inability to rationalise thoughts. My friend was aware of the initial flea problem, but didn't know the extent of my anxiety about it until recently. This was a secret I'd hidden from everyone.

We've been here a few days and I was doing really well. The concerns were there, but I was able to keep the thoughts in check. However, the thought began to be more insistent and I found it increasingly difficult to rationalise them. The I snapped. Went into hyper cleaning mode, washing bedding and clothes, hoovering, wiping etc the room we are staying in. My children just rolled their eyes, they've become used to seeing this erratic behaviour. My friend, well she just let me get on with it after I explained how my anxiety and paranoia had developed. Her husband (first time I'd met him), well god knows what he thinks about it all. I can't continue like this. The last few weeks have felt like hell and although I'm a natural worrier, these obsessive thoughts and behaviour is very out of character for me. I'm sitting here again doing my best to rationalise the thoughts, but I have this overwhelming feeling of dread that I've infected and spoilt my friends house. That her children are going to get sick from flea bites. That her and her husband are going to fall out over it all and that I'll be responsible for destroying her and her families life. I don't know what to. Please help...

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi,

Welcome to NMP :welcome: you will find loads of helpful supportive people on here and believe me, there is nothing strange or weird to us lot!

This is clearly Contamination OCD, but there are 2 forms of it, one being Mental Contamination OCD. You may find this useful from OCD UK as it explains the difference:

http://www.ocduk.org/types-ocd

Contamination – the need to clean and wash is the compulsion, the obsessive fear is that something is contaminated and/or may cause illness, and ultimately death, to a loved one or oneself.

Using public toilets (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Coming into contact with chemicals (fear of contamination).
Shaking hands (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Touching door knobs/handles (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Using public telephones (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Waiting in a GP’s surgery (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Visiting hospitals (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Eating in a cafe/restaurant (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Washing clothes in a launderette (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Touching bannisters on staircases (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Touching poles (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Being in a crowd (fear of contracting germs from other people).
Avoiding red objects and stains (fear of contracting HIV/AIDS from blood like stains).
Clothes (having to shake clothes to remove dead skin cells, fear of contamination).
Excessive Tooth Brushing (fear of leaving minute remains of mouth disease).
Cleaning of Kitchen and Bathroom (fear of germs being spread to family).
The cleaning or washing is often carried out multiple times often accompanied by rituals of repetitive hand or body washing until the person ‘feels’ it is clean, rather than someone without OCD who will wash or clean once until they ‘see’ they are clean. The time this takes can have a serious impact on a person’s ability to hold down jobs and relationships and there is also a secondary physical health impact of the constant scrubbing and cleaning on the skin, especially the hands. A person may also avoid entire places if they experienced contamination fears there previously. There is also a cost implication of the constant use and purchase of cleaning products, and also of items (especially electrical) that are damaged through excessive liquid damage.

Mental Contamination In addition to the more familiar type of contamination, that is commonly perceived to be the stereo-typical image of OCD, involving someone that washes their hands repeatedly after coming into contact with potentially dirty objects or environments, there is also a less obvious form called 'mental contamination'.

The feelings of mental contamination share some qualities with contact contamination but have some distinctive features. Feelings of mental contamination can be evoked by times when a person perhaps felt badly treated, physically or mentally, through critical or verbally abusive remarks. It is almost as if they are made to feel like dirt, which creates a feeling of internal uncleanliness — even in the absence of any physical contact with a dangerous/dirty object. A distinctive feature of mental contamination is that the source is almost always human, unlike the contact contamination that is caused by physical contact with inanimate objects.

The person will engage in repetitive and compulsive attempts to wash the dirt away by showering and washing which is where the similarities with traditional contamination OCD return.

I think with OCD something we always need to say to reassure anyone new with it is "Its OCD, whilst the activity of theme may differ, its the same core issue". This is useful because many people may not find people whose circumstances exactly fit their.

Resolution is the same too. OCD, and anxiety in general, is all about inappropriate reactions to incorrectly learnt behaviour. We need to stop reacting to the triggers and the more you do this, the more your reaction decreases and the urges come less frequent & less intense. Eventually, your subconscious stops bothering to send them as your neural pathways change to more helpful less irrational ones that associate the situations with more rational behaviours that don't involve the various rituals & intrusive thoughts.

Its not easy and it takes time, but it does work. At my worst (check some of the OCD threads I comment on) I had multiple forms of OCD that would even interact with each other, I've had the intrusive harmful thoughts, the rituals, the images, etc. Most of mine is now reduced greatly, gone completely or occurs but without anxiety.

There are others that also say the same.

Something to also consider is any underlying anxiety disorders because they can keep the OCD theme running. This can mean that some people can't fully take the CBT route to work on their OCD because their underlying anxiety disorder, GAD in my case, is too high to allow for it. In my case, I went so far with CBT on my OCD and then I switched to work on bringing my GAD down. The effect was like pulling the rug from under my OCD. Even now if my GAD spikes, my OCD goes with it but its rarely even the other way round.

So, with your posting on the GAD board, are their other issues that you may need to work on?

Something to also understand is that how the brain works is that it makes associates over a period of time. These associations can be thoughts, feelings, images, emotions, etc. It also looks for stronger emotional responses. So, the more you react, the more you allow for these neurons to be associated with each other. Its partially why its harder to treat an ingrained anxiety disorder over a new one.

This is why its important to stop reacting. I know this is very hard, I've been there but if you take steps towards bringing your anxiety down, this will become easier for you. Any rationalisation will become easier as you will gain more control over your thoughts.

There is a free CBT online course on the panic board if you want to try that out.

For me, Mindfulness helped me far more than CBT. Have you heard of it? You can do this in meditation, object handling, movement such as walking, eating, etc. It teaches you to be calmer with your thoughts but it also teaches you how to focus properly (we tend to stop doing this when we have anxiety disorders) as well as to view something from a positive of non judgement. This is important and I think this could help you because it could give you greater control over your thoughts and allow you to rationalise better as well allow you to be within the environment that is your trigger and practice being non judgemental, so no reaction. This won't, you are pretty much in your trigger all the time but it can help you. One way of using Mindfulness is to practice it on your trigger as in a form of exposure. This is recomended for such as Sensorimotor OCD but I think this could help a lot of us who have others forms of OCD. This might be hard for you at first, so maybe just learning Mindfulness will be your starting place but eventually tou may wish to expose yourself to your trigger and practice being Mindful about it to try to change your thoughts.

For Mindfulness, look for Professor Mark Williams MBCT programme in the UK or Jon Kabat-Zinn in the US. They have online resources, some paid, some free. Also, members on here say the free 10 day Headspace app is really good and their is an option to register further. Also, look in other OCD threads as we often discuss this and look on the therapy board about it as there are some threads.

[Bobb]

Thanks for the info, very helpful. I'm back home now and a mess. Can't stop crying. I feel completely overwhelmed with things that need to be done (for valid reasons) and things that I want done (for a little peace of mind) and have little energy to do either. My house is full of black bin bags, filled with things that were contained when pest man came around the first time. Its very likely that some will contain flea eggs ready to hatch. They need washing and tumble drying but I'm having difficulty getting on with it. Too many on top of everything else, plus I'm scared to open. Everything feels too much. I'm burnt out and this in itself is troubling me. So many things I should be doing

---------- Post added at 11:42 ---------- Previous post was at 11:38 ----------

I've come to realise that I feel like I'm the contaminator. I'm happy for my children to go places, but add me into the equation and I feel like I'm infecting everyone. Its a horrible feeling and guess explains why i I'm so upset atm.

[b0yer]

Bobb if you don't mind me asking what medication are you on?

Also this is a chance to do some ERP (Exposure Response Therapy). The real deamon here is the anxiety. Open the containers and you will be exposing yourself to the anxiety, but once you realize the things are clean and nothing bad is going to happen, the anxiety will decrease.

[Bobb]

I'm on a drug called xyrem, used for narcolepsy and cataplexy. I felt like I had the social anxiety that it caused under control, but then the flea thing happened and everything went crazy.

It's very possible that the black bags may contain flea eggs (which may be ready to hatch with some movement), as its stuff that should have been washed immediately but for lots of reasons didn't get done at the time. I have very limited amounts of energy and no physical support from anyone. I did my best to get on top of the problem, but bagging and leaving was the best I could do on some days. Thinking about it, this is probably where the entire problem stems from. The feeling that I haven't done enough and that I'm constantly playing catch up. I think in this instance my concern is fairly valid, although I appreciate that the degree of anxiety the thoughts of opening may be a little irrational. I could very well be back to square one with a very 'real' flea problem if I open the bags now.

[Lucinda07]

Can I ask what type of fleas are they - from a pet dog/cat?

---------- Post added at 18:55 ---------- Previous post was at 18:52 ----------

I can appreciate how overwhelmed you must feel at the moment:hugs:

[Bobb]

I think I brought them into the house on my clothes after a woodland walk (they can live in long grass apparently), as the problem seemed to start upstairs. Went straight to bed after the walk, ditching clothes in the corner of bedroom. Just thought it was a case of bed bugs when i first started being bitten, that was until I found a dead flea in the laundry bin a few days later. We only have one dog, who's not allowed upstairs and was up to date on flea treatment.

I'm starting to see why I feel like a contaminator. I brought them into the house once, what's to say that it won't happen again.

[crystal17]

Hi, I can really relate to some of this. Our cats had fleas a few months ago and it made me hysterical. I wouldn't go to bed without checking every inch for fleas, and if one of the cats had somehow got on my son's bed during the day I went mad, feeling disgusted with the whole situation.

I spent hours reading about fleas and even ended up on a parasite forum (yes they do exist! :wacko:)

We have 4 cats so as soon as one lot goes, they seem to get reinfected and my distress went on for months. I'm not sure what the answer is unfortunately, but I wanted to comment because I feel I can relate to that feeling of being a 'contaminator' and causing disease and infection to those around me.

Don't feel alone :hugs:

[Haz2017]

Hi! I realise that this thread is now old, but I can't tell you how relieved I am to find it! A couple of weeks ago, we found fleas on our dog (about 3), and I have been in a complete panic mode since! A couple of weeks before then we were away and the dog stayed with friends, where we think he has picked them up, as they have two dogs and in a middle of a house refurbished, so maybe doggy care isn't high on their priority list, although we did treat our dog before he went, (which is why I don't understand how this has happened? I realise now as it wasn't a vet bought treatment that it wasn't the best, but shop bought ones must work surley? ) anyway, it has happened and we are dealing with it! The dog is clear, and I have sprayed our house and furnishings with the indorex spray given by the vets (4 cans in total), I have bagged items to wash and they are in a queue, I have binned items (cushions wicker baskets etc, things that are not worth looking at and questioning in the future!) I've even bought new duvet (as our dog slept with us on our bed) and washed curtains and blinds! But still I am not happy! I'm convinced they've gone into my clothes drawer and wardrobe (did I put an item back in the wardrobe before I knew of this problem? ) So therefore I have contaminated the wardrobe, which I am too scared to open now! Im even in bed as I type this, as I'm too scared to step out! Since the first initial sighting on the dog, I think I have seen 1, and another one dead (I'm not sure as we're not even sure they were fleas to begin with, and as I'm not sure that's what it was, I have nothing to compare it to? ) Doesn't matter what they were, I'm too scared to be in the house normally! Every black speck I see I'm inspecting it, but yet to find a flea, dead or alive! We are being bitten though, so theres the proof I supose? A professional man is coming tomorrow to spray the house, more for piece mind, (as he has mentioned about the eggs and larvae) but I'm stil in a major panic! How easy are fleas to see jumping around? How can they bite us and us not notice them? My ocd and anxiety are through the roof, Im talking to everyone I see about it, and they keep saying it'll be fine don't worry about it, even the doctor, but no one can say anything to convince me that this isn't a big deal! I've never dealt with this before, therefore I am unsure how my anxiety is going to come through the other end? Will I get over it? How long did it take for u to get back to 'normal'? Or did u ever?! I'm afraid I'm never going to look at the dog or the house the same again! I'm afraid a few months down the line, I'm still going to be thinking, was there treated? there could be fleas or flea eggs in there! My husband is very supportive, but like he says, when is enough enough?! I would like to now how u 'survived' and how you over came it, my husband, family and friends are concerned for me! Any help will be appreciated, thank you!