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techrvl
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PathStep 11 Compassion hearts14 Forum posts1 Forum upvotes2 Current upvotes2 Age GroupAdult Last activeDecember, 2022 Member sinceDecember 31, 2022
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Severe Anxiety Surrounding Hygiene/Body Smells
Anxiety Support / by techrvl
Last post
 January 9th, 2023
...See more Hey all, new to this app/experience. I've been going through working on improving my mental health after some years after a pretty rough...life lol. Some days have been better than others, but overall, learning to better understand my triggers and disorders has been a blessing. Recently, the past month, I've been having some pretty intense issues, to the point where I had to institutionalize myself, for a professional opinion. For some reason, I became really paranoid and even dead set that my neighbors/strangers were convinced I smelled really bad. Not so bad, right? As it evolved, it became something that consumed me. I became convinced my neighbors hated me and even joined forces to conspire against me... all because I smelled bad. I was even convinced I can hear them following me around my apartment, based on the scent alone. I called the police, emt and finally checked myself into a psych ward for an evaluation because I thought I was a walking trash cab. Of course, nothing was wrong physically and my apartment smelled about the same as any other; surely not something to call into the cdc. Then, the question: "has anyone said anything to you about this directly?" ...no... but yet and still, it got to the point where my social anxiety would convince me that anyone I came across was just eagerly waiting to say I smelled disgusting. Now, this happened in my childhood quite a bit and I'm working through cbt to identify the negative patterns (it seems like an obsessive/negative self talk loop). I deliver food and as you can imagine it's been *** to feel like every person I pass by is sniffing the air at me. However, facing the public has also been vital to healing and so, I'm curious: what do you guys do to cope with feelings of bodily shame or even worse: the feelings of rejection that come with a confirmed bodily odor coming from you?
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