Alright, so, this is going to sound crazy, but I don’t like showering. It has nothing to do with the feeling of being clean (I love cleanliness and order), but just simply because I find it uncomfortable to shower. I have a whole bunch of fancy shampoos, nice-smelling body washes, etc to help encourage me to shower, but it still just feels freaking uncomfortable and annoying. And it’s so embarrassing to talk about it because of the stereotypes about people and showering. I end up showering on about an every-other-day or every-two-days basis, and I’d really like reducing that down to every day. I don’t like smelling, or desperately trying to avoid people because I’m insecure I stink. I just want to be motivated to shower without having to constantly force myself to do it for the sake of everyone else or picking up the pieces.
By the way, my psychiatrist strongly suspects I’m autistic. I’m being formally evaluated w/ the psychologists and stuff in late July. So that might be a reason why I have such an odd dilemma like this.
I just don’t feel clean unless it’s once a day kind of thing. Yeah, I don’t know why it’s so normalized either, but I kind of participate anyway because I don’t like the pampering it takes to ensure I don’t stink and the constant insecurity over my smell. It’s summer and humid here, so I can’t escape sweating, even with cotton/linen clothes and sunscreen to the max.
I make sure to use body lotion and body oil so that my skin isn’t so dry after cleaning.
Does your deodorant not work? Have you talked to your doctor about prescription deodorant? Are you actually stinky or are you just worrying about it because obsessive thoughts about insecurity is a very autistic thing
The deodorant I’m using is weaker than the other brand I’ve tried, but it works well enough for daily use. I could stink, or could not stink. I don’t know. That’s what bothers me most—I genuinely can’t tell if I stink or not. I just use external cues like oily hair and certain “feelings.”
I may or may not be autistic. We don’t know, so I could just be anxious and have it not be an autism thing.