Severe Anxiety Surrounding Hygiene/Body Smells

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?