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.
Almost no one needs to shower daily unless you’re getting actually dirty or sweating your ass off because you live in a hot or humid climate. There’s nothing unsanitary about showering every other day or every two days, a lot of dermatologists would even advocate for exactly that. If you’re getting stinky when you don’t shower for 48 hours that’s likely due to not wearing or using effective deodorant or not washing clothes well enough, often this is a washing machine or product issue not anything you’re doing wrong, it could be you’re not regularly cleaning your sheets or maybe even diet but it’s almost certainly not because you shower a completely normal amount, you probably do not stink.
That said I’m also autistic and I also do not like to shower, I find it physically uncomfortable and over stimulating to be touched all over like that. I shower ever 2-4 days, I live with my kids and they would absolutely tell me, and have, if I get stinky and it doesn’t happen often because it’s not a matter of not showering enough but the sort of stuff I listed above.
Are you sure you’re not experiencing OCD like symptoms externalizing your social anxieties and causing you to worry about being stinky? OCD and autism have a pretty high comorbidity so having obsessive or intrusive thoughts might be a better place to start investigating rather than trying to shower more since you already shower a perfectly normal amount.
Was previously diagnosed with OCD. I simply took the CBT techniques to heart and over a few years my OCD just kind of…disappeared. Although there are remaining issues, I don’t deal with a lot of intrusive thoughts on the regular. Now I’m diagnosed with bipolar I, whatever that means…
I had bad hygiene in the past (middle school me genuinely stank) and some bad memories associated with it, so now I guess I am a little obsessive about my cleanliness. I’m afraid of the social isolation and judgement passed onto twelve-year-old me will repeat, so I’m careful to make sure I’m smelling fresh.
The clothes are not a problem (although polyester does collect odor), but I will replace my sheets more often and look into laundry techniques some more.