Bribery and OCD

As we moved from our old city up here i threw out a lot of stuff that i 'believed' had ocd in them somewhere.  This included my wedding dress and lots of stuff from the garage i didn't want to clean so they would be good enuf to go into the truck.  We got rid of lots of stuff that way...some of which we probably should have kept.  Well, that's how bad it was 3 yrs ago. 

While i was cleaning out the basement, i packed a bin of art/ craft supplies- scissors, glitter bottles etc.  I put this box into the cold room because it was clean- or so i thot.  I'm not sure if the lid was placed properly on the bin or whether i'd left it partially open.  Everything seemed ok until we started packing up the cold room supplies.  Behind the metal racks mold was growing on the walls (again- i'd already cleaned the basement of mold 2ce in the 5 yrs we lived in the house. We even had a dehumidifier going so i thot the problem was solved.)

Well, i freaked- internally.  And this art bin seemed to be the physical thing that i focused on.  Was this bin closed?  Did mold spores get in?  Should i throw out the box?  I didn't want to, so i washed the outside of the bin down and put it in another room.  Well, unfortunately this bin seemed to house all those emotions i felt.   It got packed into some closet and never emptied out. 

DD (5 yrs old)  was taking swimming lessons this summer and became scared that she would drown or something.  I couldn't talk her out of it.  It reminded me of how i can't talk myself out of my OCD.  One day a while she had told me i could get rid of my ocd by just believing i could do something.  I told her it was not quite that simple.  It was to her.

 So i thot of how much dd would LOVE to have the stuff in this art box (she's a budding artist).  I told her that ocd is as hard to get rid of as her swimming fear.  She looked at me with understanding.  (Yeah, she gets it a bit)  So i told her that if she went to lessons on Monday and did what her instructor told her to do, i would open this art bin for her.  She did her part on Monday.  I was so proud of her for conquering her fears! 

But now that meant i had to do my part of the bargin.  I'd already realized that there were no ocd mold spores in the bin (if there had been, they'd be killed by now :) and to make sure i was right i asked dh for a final confirmation.  So i opened the bin and washed my hands while dh took out the stuff and we  gave most of it to dd.

When i told this to my counsellor she asked if i touched the stuff too, without handwashing and i had to admit that was not happening.  I even gasped as the first thing dd did was to cart some of these supplies to my living room.  UG.  So this week i DID touch them and get rid of that fear...except the bin is still sitting upstairs in the corner alone and forsaken. 

The rest of  the week hasn't been so great.  I'm giving in to ocd stuff all over.  Not new stuff, just the same old stuff i can't get rid of.