I've noticed that I've become quite handicapped by the fact that I get weakly triggered by having to interact with things that aren't, but could plausibly be, dirty. This fear goes away once I wash my hands, but I've found that I'm wasting lots of time washing my hands, and that I've stopped e.g. gratitude journaling because I have to pick up a pen to journal, and the pen might be dirty and I'd have to wash my hands after, which hurts me because I seem to get lots out of gratitude journaling. I've also stopped drinking tea (which I enjoy) because, even though I clean my microwave and sink handles often enough, it's possible that a roommate touched them with dirty hands, which means that I'd have to wash my hands after, which sounds effortful, and that knowing that having to wash my hands would require effort makes getting up to have tea much harder.

I won't go on, but I assure you that my system 1 is making a bigger deal of this cluster of cleanliness-related things than it should.

Mostly, I'm looking for suggestions, and also mushy emotional verificatioin that, while I'm not being bad, it's not necessary to be so paranoid.

It's not so much the case that I have unanswered factual questions about cleanliness, with the exception that I am unsure if (say) touching a doorknob, then touching my phone, then washing my hands and touching phone again makes them dirty. I will say that my System 1 thinks that my hands are always either in a binary "dirty" or "not dirty", which is perhaps a bit silly.

Anyhow, thank you all very much. It seems like having to interact with dirty things on a daily basis might have acted as some sort of exposure therapy, but it seems like I've just gotten more System 1-paranoid over time. Suggestions are quite welcome. <3