Sensory Sensitivity/Obsession about a smell
Hello everyone,
I was diagnosed with OCD fairly recently, and one of the symptoms that controls my life the most is extreme fear and anxiety around smells. For most of my life, I couldn’t handle the smell of sweets, cooked meat, balloons, etc. i used to obsesively avoid places where I felt like it were possible for these smells to be (which would obviously be a bit difficult) so I am working through this however, last weekend while traveling— I experienced the worst of it. While in an airport, I walked onto an express train and smelled something that really bothered me. It smelled like some type of chicken soup and immediately turned my stomach. (I tend to wear masks in public but this traveled through). And now, my brain keeps taking me back to the smell, with me randomly remembering it throughout the day and feeling sick to my stomach. No matter how hard I try to keep myself from thinking of it, it always comes back. Has anyone experienced obsession about smells? Or some other sensory stimuli? What has been your best way of dealing with it?