What about socks and shoes? Consider an average teenagers bedroom… Worn clothes all over the place… I resist the word ‘Dirty’, but, in fairness, that is what it is. Pick up a pair of socks from the floor to put on… We don’t always grab the right end… Do we turn them inside/right side out? Do we/they ever get ill? Basically, No… As abhorrent as it sounds, handling dirty socks has never made us ill physically. What about tying shoelaces… Or retying them on the way home from school, when they were wet from the rain and walking in puddles… And people never cleaned up after their dogs in the 1960’s. At the height of my OCD, I believed everything I touched to be ‘contaminated’ in some way, and that I then passed that ‘contamination’ to everything else I came into contact with. Eventually it became unworkable… And yet… People around me, were ‘contaminating’ everything, but not getting ill, or causing any discomfort or misfortune to anyone. CBT helped me realise that, we already have resistance to just about everything around us, developed over years of our own immune systems strengthening up. Firewood… Using a logburner in the garden, handling the timber, and then grabbing a burger… Statistically… Barbecues are reasonably safe… As long as the food is well and thoroughly cooked. Whatever is on our fingers doesn’t come into the argument…
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