YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I shower daily and always have wanted to be clean. BUT my sister has a spot on her that she hasn't washed herself since an operation she had in 1988. That's right. She had breast implants taken out in 1997 and, when the surgeon saw the spot, he thought she had the worst cancer tumor he'd ever seen. She was in surgery over 3 hours to have implants removed because he was scraping the skin and cleaning her. Some people in the OR threw up from the stench. Now, she's a got place on her knee that she, personally, hasn't touched in 17 weeks! She has physical therapy for the knee and they do touch it so it's not totally out of control - yet. But she admits she doesn't want to see herself naked. She still doesn't touch that spot. I don't know if she uses soap when she does 'shower.' SO I think she wins, even though she's not a member. My other sister will shower for 3 hours at a time so she loses big time! I'm normal in the shower area but I have other little quirks that people don't understand.

Oh man, about a month ago I went around 8 days? Just slicked my hair back into a ponytail with its own grease lol. Lately I'm only showering once every three days or so :/ While going to the gym never helped me feel less depressed at all, at least it forced me to shower every day lol.

I can smell them. Not shaving my legs for ages (easy when single) until it hurts to wear socks that pull at the hair.

When I was really into bigorexia I wouldn't let myself shower until I went to the gym and "earned it". When I got out of bigorexia I maintained the no-shower-until-gym rule, and I would go 4-5 days without showering. Now that my hair is short I feel it when I haven't showered and clumpy gross hair is nasty, so I shower basically every other day or whenever I sweat a lot. I think that's about right...? I dunno. Soap can be expensive and heavy and since I don't have a car I try to preserve heavy items as long as possible so that I don't have to haul a ton of heavy shit all over the place.

Im not ashamed to admit it, sometimes i will not shower for up to two weeks. this is typically during the colder months, the summer is about a week. But im obsessed with smell and i am not repulsed by myself in this way, cant speak for everyone else, but if the conditioned are ripe i will smell like a strange perfume for the world to enjoy.