
It’s totally possible to do exposures for this. Exposures can be imaginal (imagining your feared situation), interoceptive (exposing yourself to physical sensations like being dizzy), and actually doing the things you are afraid of. So you would build a hierarchy of situations that create the fear of poisoning and work your way through them
Get a carbon monoxide detector! I bought one for only $30 at Walmart 💚 a good thing to remember too is if you have an electric stove and heating (and you don’t run a gas powered car in the closed garage) then there’s virtually zero sources of carbon monoxide that could be created in your home. I’ve had this fear too. Please let me know if you have questions!
i’d put it like this based on similar experience i had concerning an extreme fear of bugs: normal people would buy an alarm and go about their life. imo avoiding reassurance shouldn’t come at the cost of taking normal measures against things, but you have to treat it normally from there. for me it was: sure, i can put bug traps, but no, i can’t be checking them every single day multiple times a day. sure, keep the house tidy, but no, my body doesn’t need to be disinfected if i walk into my room.
I know this is like totally against the whole concept of exposure, but I think I need to work on the fear that I’ll be so desensitized to it that one day it’ll actually happen and I won’t know it and I’ll end up seriously ill as well. It’s super illogical, but when is OCD ever logical?