Uncontrollable Excessive

Washing & Cleaning Habits

​

Washing and cleaning rituals are the most well-known and widely recognized problems.

People with this type of uncontrollable behaviors can be described as perpetually engaged in uncontrollable acts of decontamination. People who uncontrollably wash and clean can be divided into two groups:

1- Those who are trying to prevent being harmed or spreading harm to others via contamination: This group of people are usually worried about coming down with an illness or disease from contamination, which in some cases may involve responsibility for spreading contamination to others. Washing rituals are performed in an attempt to prevent this perceived danger. Individuals

2- Those who feel discomfort or contaminated by specific substances, but are not worried about harm: this group tend to have fewer identifiable obsessions and engage in cleaning compulsions merely to relieve the discomfort associated with feeling dirty. People with this type of excessive uncontrollable habit typically have very strong disgust reactions.

​

Excessive Washing Behaviors:

People with contamination fears will typically engage in excessive washing in order remove dirt and germs, or just to feel clean. This often involves excessive or repeated hand-washing.

Hand-washing may be done in a ritualized manner, where the person cleans each finger individually and sometimes even under each fingernail. It is not uncommon for people with this type of behavior to have hands that are red and chapped, and they may even bleed. Once hands are clean, the person will then carefully turn off the tap with another object, such as the towel or napkin, to avoid recontamination of the hands. Compulsive hand-washers may also engage in excessive use of hand sanitizers between trips to the sink.

Excessive or ritualized showering, bathing, tooth-brushing, grooming, or toilet routine

Other measures to prevent or remove contact with contaminants (i.e. wear gloves)

​

Excessive Cleaning Behaviors:

People with contamination behavior may spend a lot of time cleaning of household items or other inanimate objects. For example, someone with this type of behavior may wash their shoes, credit cards, cell phone, or other things that may have come into contact with something that may be considered dirty or contaminated.

​

Avoiding Contaminants:

People with contamination concerns will often go to great lengths to avoid getting dirty. They may avoid touching their shoes by pushing the heel of one shoe down with the other. They may use a sleeve or tissue to open a door knob.

​

How emotion is linked to excessive uncontrollable behavior?

This kind of emotional tagging can happen for various reasons, and sometimes quite accidentally. Essentially, we make an association between an occurrence in our environment, and the emotional state that we happen to be in at the time. If this is a negative emotional state, this gets 'stuck on' to the occurrence in our brains. So when whatever it was happens again, so does the negative emotion.

​

The consequence is that, even though you might know full well that what you are doing doesn't make any rational, objective sense, the feeling associated with it is so strong that you feel compelled to go along with it. You get strung along by the emotional tag.

Fortunately, you are not doomed to be at the mercy of this compulsion forever. It is in essence a piece of your brain 'programming' that's got a mistake in it. But brain programming is not fixed. You can modify it very effectively. And the best and easiest way to modify it is through hypnosis.

​

Hypnosis can help you overcome the urge to engage in excessive hand washing.

Our hypnosis sessions are developed and based solidly on modern understandings of how the brain develops patterned behavior. The hypnotic trance is the ideal state in which to close down unwanted patterns and establish and strengthen healthy and beneficial patterns.

​

As you learn to relax more and more deeply each time you are under hypnosis, your brain will take in and process carefully constructed hypnotic suggestions at an unconscious level. You will notice a number of significant changes taking place. You'll find yourself

• feeling calmer and less anxious in life generally

• becoming less aware of the triggering factors - and even forgetting to notice them at all

• naturally doing other things at times when the behavior would once have taken over

• developing appropriate patterns of self care that are free of emotion

• enjoying life more

​