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.
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
This is a very individual thing. I start smelling really fast, especially during the summer, and i also sweat a lot (which i take advantage of at home by having a good ventilator, which is my constant companion if temperatures start rising above 27°C) - ideally i should shower twice a day so i can feel clean. Medically, everything is fine with me - Blood samples are fine, my circulatory system is fine and i don’t eat fast food more than once every 2 weeks or so, the rest is home cooking.
Since I know that this is bad for my skin, i skip it when i don’t meet people, but for me daily is really the minimum to dont feel icky.
I just don’t feel clean unless it’s once a day kind of thing. Yeah, I don’t know why it’s so normalized either, but I kind of participate anyway because I don’t like the pampering it takes to ensure I don’t stink and the constant insecurity over my smell. It’s summer and humid here, so I can’t escape sweating, even with cotton/linen clothes and sunscreen to the max.
I make sure to use body lotion and body oil so that my skin isn’t so dry after cleaning.
Does your deodorant not work? Have you talked to your doctor about prescription deodorant? Are you actually stinky or are you just worrying about it because obsessive thoughts about insecurity is a very autistic thing
The deodorant I’m using is weaker than the other brand I’ve tried, but it works well enough for daily use. I could stink, or could not stink. I don’t know. That’s what bothers me most—I genuinely can’t tell if I stink or not. I just use external cues like oily hair and certain “feelings.”
I may or may not be autistic. We don’t know, so I could just be anxious and have it not be an autism thing.
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.