Latex Gloves Help with OCD

I know some people may say I sound a bit dramatic when I say that latex gloves saved my life, but they did. Let me explain.

Thirteen years ago I was diagnosed with having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - OCD. OCD is an anxiety disorder which has many symptoms such as checking, fear of contamination, fear of harm to oneself or to something/someone else, acting out on aggressive impulses, the need to be very neat and to have everything in order, hoarding, invasive thought repetitiveness and obsessively cleaning. A person who has been diagnosed with OCD can have any number of these symptoms and others, and one can be more prevalent than the other.

My most prevalent OCD symptom is fear of contamination. When I think back to when OCD was at its' worst with me, I couldn't touch anything in my home. I'm still not sure which feeling was more overpowering - me fearing that I was going to contaminate things, or that things were going to contaminate me. I couldn't even go into the kitchen and prepare a meal for myself, so my daughter had to do it for me before she left for school, or work. I was trapped in my home; a prisoner in my own home. I started psychotherapy, but progress in therapy was slow and 13 years later, I am still in therapy. I can't remember back to that very first day I started wearing latex gloves, but it was a miracle that it happened because it became the only way I was able to start touching things little by little. I know it might not sound too hopeful if I tell you that right now I am typing this with latex gloves on, but imagine if I had a computer right in front of me and I wasn't able to use it at all. All I could pretty much do indoors was lay on the couch and even opening and closing the bathroom door was tormenting for me. Wearing latex gloves inside my home when I need to do things, opened up my life again and enabled me to once again have a life.

Yes they can be annoying to wear, especially during the hot summer months. They are also hard to explain when someone comes into the house and they are also very expensive to buy all the time. I buy the Walgreens brand when they are on sale for 3 for $10.00 either with a coupon that's in their weekly ad, or sometimes they run an in-store sale, or a circular sale with no coupon needed. I usually buy 15 at a time which is very costly - $50.00 plus tax, but it's still a lot cheaper than their regular price of $4.99 each. The ones I like come in 3 sizes - S, M and L. If you're considering buying and wearing latex gloves, make sure you are not allergic to latex, or any kinds of powder which is inside the gloves. Stores sell plastic gloves too, but for me personally they are not as comfortable, or as durable. I've tried all other brands and these by Walgreens are my favorite. I very much wish I didn't have this expense, but when I compare wearing them to not being able to do anything inside the house, the cost is well worth it.

Latex gloves now fill the gap between me not being able to touch anything and trying to wean myself off of them. After my last vacation, I stopped wearing the latex gloves for whatever I have to do in the kitchen. In therapy I've learned self-talk as a way to help me through those tormenting thoughts, so after my vacation I said to myself, "I didn't have to wear them while I was on vacation, so I'm going to stop wearing them in the house." I was able to half-way fulfill that desire, by not wearing them anymore in the kitchen - except to do garbage and to pick up something that falls on the floor. I wear those thick yellow gloves as I wash dishes, which mostly serve a different purpose.

In the long 13 years of being in therapy, progress is slow, but I've come a long way. Now if one of the gloves gets a hole in it while I'm wearing them, I no longer have an anxiety attack as I used to. My one huge goal in therapy and on my own is to come to the day when I don't feel the need to wear latex gloves in the house anymore at all. Okay, maybe just to pick up things that fall on the floor; maybe not. I'm trying to build up the self-confidence to feel that I'm not going to do any harm to anything and that nothing is going to harm me. I'll be very happy when I achieve this goal and it will make me even happier because I will be saving a lot of money that I would have spent on buying the latex gloves. Even though sometimes it feels impossible, I'll never give up hope.