I feel that my body is impure after I was ragged, what should I do?
Lead Psychiatrist,
Adult Mental Health Program,
Australia
Q: I am 22 years old male, and was mentally and physically ragged by a senior. Due to this if any senior touches me, I rub that part of my body 100 times or place that part in holy water. I am very depressed and feel like committing suicide. While I am cleaning myself, I feel very tired. I create illusions that my hand is completely not in the water or I am washing the wrong part. My mind is fluctuating between the state of pure and impure. My condition is getting worse, even when a senior touches someone and I touch that person, I feel he has touched me. I have this problem with every object he touched like books, bag, clothes etc. One senior touched my bag and my TV, so now I feel that the TV is impure. I have spoken about this to my mother and visited a psychologist but the problem recurs. My mother is very depressed and cannot see my condition. Please advise.
A:Ragging can be pretty traumatic. I can understand that you have been tormented by the experience and are still experiencing negative emotions post that experience.While you have elaborated this emotional state and felling pure/ impure and the cleaning of parts etc, I would want to know that in your mind, have you ever thought it is very senseless to have these thoughts that after touching it has become impure, and do you also think that these thoughts of impurity come to you repeatedly, disturb you, and affect your daily functioning. On the same note the acts of cleaning yourself / rubbing yourself – are they repeated many times affecting your schedule etc. Don't you think that by once cleaning it would have been cleaned and do you think the repeated acts themselves are senseless but the underlying anxiety prevents you from ceasing these acts even if you feel that they are not required or should not be done. If the answers for most of the questions are yes, you may be having a specific psychiatric disorder and would benefit by visiting a psychiatrist who would be able to start you on specific medications and help you to engage in specific behaviour therapy for alleviation of the problem and the distress associated with it.