I hugged my son after school without making him change clothes first

Dear Delyara, My OCD focused on contamination. When my son came home from school, I made him remove shoes, change clothes, wash hands and sometimes shower before I could comfortably hug him. He learned the routine so young that he thought every family did it. Exposure therapy has been one of the hardest things I have ever done. We worked gradually: touching his schoolbag, sitting on the sofa in outside clothes, delaying handwashing, allowing anxiety to rise without neutralizing it. Yesterday, my son ran through the door upset because he had argued with a friend. He came straight toward me. For one second, I saw his coat, backpack, playground dirt, every imagined germ. Then I hugged him. Fully. Before changing. Before washing. My anxiety surged and stayed high for a while. My son cried into my shoulder and never knew there was another battle happening. Mental-health recovery was not feeling clean enough to hug him. It was deciding my child did not have to wait for my fear to finish before receiving comfort.