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.
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By the way, my psychiatrist strongly suspects I’m autistic.
I don’t like showering…because I find it uncomfortable to shower.
I’m not even a psychiatrist and I can tell you’re on the spectrum. welcome!
have you thought about taking baths instead of showers? if that also icks you out, learn about how bathing works from Japan. you could get enough water to wash yourself and then just rinse the soap away. minimal time under running water and you get clean, it’s a win/win.
I usually just let my patients do hoebaths / birdbaths for a bit in between real ones. That’s wet wipes to the face, pits, and genitals / perineum and then a shower cap designed for a bedbath where you scrunch it in, let it sit, then just towel dry it out. You can also put it in a warmer designed for wipes / caps OR some of them even have microwave instructions.
Now that said I have access to all of this from the stockroom on the medical unit next door who actually have to do bedbaths rapidly and at scale. For a cheaper / more eco friendly option most nursing homes use a basin and washcloths with special no rinse soaps. If you keep your home sink clean enough you don’t even need the basin. Just be careful to go in the right order face -> pits -> genitals -> butt.
Another thought (if you’re white) is that washing your hair once a week isn’t actually just for black people. White hair CAN tolerate daily washing with soap but that doesn’t mean it should. My 2B hair has been much fuller with a healthier sheen and gets compliments from hairdressers with once a week washing. I do regular soap only once a week then put a pea size amount of Vaseline on my fingertips then fingercomb through and that’s all it needs. It gets wet and toweled off in my regular shower but that’s incidental. My hair is also short so there’s no daily combing and styling happening just making sure the part is set right while it’s wet. If you’re washing daily right now there’ll be a 1-2 month oily detox / withdrawal period but just tie it off your face and wear a hat / scarf and it’ll be worth it when the detox is done.
My last thing to say is that if you pick ONE hygiene task daily the one thing that will affect your long term health the MOST is brushing your teeth, so if you have to pick one it’s that one. Well washing your hands is actually more important but I’m hoping you’re doing that more than once a day.
About the white hair part, I have something akin to 1c/2a, and my hair genuinely just gets oily and sometimes dandruffy after the first day. How are you able to extend it to a week?!
Like I said; detox period. Wear hats / scarves / bonnets for a month or two. It’s rough but it’s worth it.
Is there actual science behind this?
This is the best description of the phenomenon I could find easily, but it’s kinda just a known thing in hair care groups like curly girl method stuff.
My first and best move, I believe, was to make my bathroom a lot less stimulating. I added an indirect light, an adjustable pressure shower head, and a space heater.
That helps an absolute ton.
I also accepted that doing less but doing it still, is a lot better than not doing it at all. Someday I just shower, some other day I shave and shower, some other day I just wash my hair. Breaking it up and not seeing “hygiene” as a big single task massively helps too (and that’s applicable to many other things as well).
Oooh. Thank you! (i’m going broke)
If you’re actually autistic, I hope you get diagnosed, it’s definitely life changing (for the best and sometimes the worst ahah)!
I don’t know how to feel about the autism thing T_T I don’t feel like I have enough of the criteria to be autistic, but damn it could explain some things. I don’t know. We’ll see I guess!
When I questioned whether or not I was autistic (at 31) with my therapist, it made me realise how contextualised and nuanced it was, how ingrained it was and what couldn’t be explained by autism was actually ADHD. It turns out I have both (as many do).
Now everything just makes sense, but it took me almost 3 years of introspection, reflection and work to see it all (or most of it, I’m pretty sure there are things that I haven’t entirely noticed or understood yet).
I thought the same thing, that I could have autism and ADHD combined, and that it simply masked symptoms from both sides. But this was during a manic episode, so I don’t know how much of that was actually credible.
Why is it so normalised that people have to shower every day? Are people running a marathon or something? It can even harm your skin to shower so often. Unless you do physical exercise or have a condition showering everyday might harm more than it solves. Source
I think this is a result of marketing and capitalism, it’s so important everyone things they’re dirty and gross so we can sell them more soaps and perfumes and products to alleviate the stress the people selling said products put in their heads.
In my case, it’s that I feel insecure about my hair. The shower is crucial to undo bedhead before I leave the house.
