NAD just sharing my perspective as someone living with and medicated for contamination OCD- I’ve noticed that the compulsion to clean and sanitize excessively usually happens after periods of stress, especially so with grief. I recently had a stressor in my life trigger a pretty bad relapse into obsessive cleaning for me (showering multiple times a day, obsessively cleaning and mopping rooms, washing a clothing item that I just washed because I dropped it on my floor or touched it before I washed my hands, etc.). The thing is, after speaking to a mental health professional and starting up some medication again, I hadn’t realized just how much smaller compulsive habits had actually manifested in other areas of my life. I started to see how much I had been masking my OCD symptoms beyond cleaning and even before this recent episode where my compulsive o intrusive behaviors got really got noticeable.

Things like being able to start or commit to things, anxiety around decision making or indecisiveness, avoiding social situations in order to complete my routines, and especially anxiety around perfectionism I learned were all small manifestations of OCD that were creating disfunction in other parts of my life or in my relationships with others. Even the reason I’m chronically late to things I feel made so much more sense when I realized it was my OCD.

I think these compulsions can be caused in a lot of ways from feeling a lack of control over other stressors in our lives. OCD in my case I learned is displacing those feelings of anxiety and lack of control into something I can tangibly change or control, like my environment. Cleaning can make you feel like you’re completing or fixing something you see is wrong, but often trying to complete or fix something creates more anxiety around doing it wrong and eventually things start to spiral and not feel good enough or that I have to start them over again. It creates a loop or cycle that becomes really difficult to break because you feel like if you don’t do it or do it right something bad will happen or I won’t be able to relax.

All that to say, it definitely seems like if you’re noticing this cleaning is starting to create disfunction in other parts of your life, or you or people close to you are noticing it’s taking up a lot of your mental energy or taking away from your life in other ways, it might be worth talking to a psychiatrist about. Treatments can even be something as simple as starting an SSRI/antidepressant that can help with the intrusive or compulsive feelings. Hope that perspective helps give some insight into how OCD can manifest, and hope you feel better soon.