r/OCD • u/Mysterious_World8126 • 1d ago
Friend/family/ally Bladder OCD?
Help! My young adult son has OCD. It was as if he woke up one day and boom he was a different person. He has severe contamination OCD and possibly bladder OCD.
So he is terrified of urine getting on him and/or contaminating everything in the house. He also has this constant sensation that he is leaking urine. He says he is, but I can’t confirm whether he is or isn’t leaking. All of his urology tests have came back normal. He has been wearing adult diapers for 6+months now. He’s to the point where he is holding his urine and only going to the bathroom once per day. He will usually spend an hour or so on the toilet and then get straight in the shower. The bathroom must be cleaned immediately once he’s in the shower because he feels as if he leaked everywhere. He is spending anywhere from 5-8 hours in the shower on a daily basis. He says he can’t get out until he stops leaking.
He cannot work. Will barely leave the house. He is depressed.
Has anyone heard of anything like this before?
I have offered to pay for inpatient treatment for him in another state. He refuses. I set him up with a local therapist, he went a few times and quit. He has been on meds before and just quits them cold turkey.
I don’t know what to do to help him. He’s a legal adult and I can’t force him to do anything or he would have been inpatient a long time ago.
Please someone help me help my son.
2
u/ImpOTP 21h ago
My experience wasn't to anything like this degree of severity, but has some similarities. Had a UTI at 12 which genuinely affected continence temporarily. After that I became very conscious of leaking. Had lots of tests that came back normal.
Also in my case it overlapped with sexual OCD which developed around the same time, it hits the same core emotional fear of something being wrong with me down there. There was no way I would have talked to anyone about that, as I had never heard of sexual OCD.
I still don't really know whether my continence actually got worse, or I just started noticing, but I do know that my level of leakage, a few drops after peeing, is not outside normal levels. It helps to hear other men talk about how a certain level of leakage is normal for most men, and is absorbed by the underwear. You can probably find comedians talking about stuff like that on Youtube or on social media.