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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Pick up some baby wipes. My wife and I like Water Wipes, they’re plastic and fragrance free but there are many other choices out there as well. Aside from the obvious usage in the bathroom, a quick wipe down of your armpits and nether regions can go a long way to keep you fresh between showers.
Thank you! I do have wipes for this reason as well 😁
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.
ohhh, interesting!
I bring my towel into the bathroom and turn the water on. I tell myself I can turn the water off and give up but usually just the partial act of showering will get me to do it. Putting on music or a podcast helps so I can pay attention to something else while showering helps too.
Otherwise I’ll use wet wipes for the days it’s just not happening.
Just want to second all of this advice. Make showering as pleasant as possible - I use podcasts the most. I’ll even bring in my coffee or a cold beverage and reframe it as “spa” time.
Also showering every other day, as long as you’re not in a super hot climate, is usually plenty to keep yourself at normal levels of cleanliness.
Crap, why didn’t I think of it as spa time? Seriously, I might just get some stuff to set it up like a bathhouse. Too bad my area’s too rural and separated for any banyas to exist.
Sometimes tricking our brain is easy lol
I hope that helps!!
Thank you for the tip—it sounds amazing!
I love music, but it doesn’t sound right in the shower, therefore I avoid audio for the sake of preserving the original sound. I have a pack of antibiotic wet wipes for that reason as well.
Audio books and a decent speaker. I have a little clip speaker that I bought specifically for the shower. I love getting lost in books while showering and since the actual cleaning activity occupies the annoying part of my brain, I can truly sink in to the narrative.
Damn, the JBL one? I was thinking about getting that for snowboarding anyway LOL. I’ve never really tried an audiobook, but if I end up getting a JBL, it’s worth a shot I guess!
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I see where you come from. The stink will be a challenge if you don’t shower daily. As a rule of thumb, if you can smell yourself, others do, too.
A washcloth may do the trick. It’s important to use hot water and soap. Wash once with soap, a second time with clear water.
If you can smell yourself, others have been smelling you for a while.
Should I toss the washcloth into the laundry bin afterwards (of course, after hanging it to dry)? Thinking about cutting up some old or broken clothes for this.
I use washcloth mittens myself. These are popular here in Germany, cheap, practical and durable. I dry them next to my towel after I use them.
I wash a mitten after 2-3 uses, and wash it with my towels. I put it to my nose for a smell test before I use it. And if it doesn’t smell fresh anymore, I‘ll put it in the laundry.
That sounds like the exfoliating gloves we have here in the States. I don’t use anything other than my hands for the sake of hygiene (can’t stand the idea of being washed with potential bacteria/oil/dead skin cells), but a simple rag that I chuck into a washing machine on a sanitizing cycle would probably be effective. Thanks for the idea!
Have you tried dry shampoo and dry soap?
I have dry shampoo, but I’ve never heard of dry soap. What’s that?
If smell is an issue, try different clothing. A couple years back i discovered “anti-microbial” shirts. I have no idea what they’re treated with, but they basically suppress BO. If i wear normal cotton t-shirts, i feel like i reek in the early afternoon. On a more natural sode, I’ve recently had very positive experiences with merino wool clothing.
Hm, that’s interesting. Usually natural fibers are preferred for breathability and odor control, so I’m curious about how a (probably) synthetic fabric would combat against odor.
The tag mentions close too 100% cotton, but also “biocide”. So probably not the best for the environment, but it still works after a couple hundred washes
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.
ouuu???
specifically bathing for onsen. usually includes a bucket, scour or cloth, soap, a stool and an open floor drain.
fill the bucket with water dip your soap and scour to lather and wash yourself. when you’re finished rinse from the bucket.
typically you’d go into the onsen at that point, but you could just dry and get on with your day. adjust it to what suits you and your needs though. I think this would give a perfectly acceptable result when compared to typical “western” showers.
Almost no one needs to shower daily unless you’re getting actually dirty or sweating your ass off because you live in a hot or humid climate. There’s nothing unsanitary about showering every other day or every two days, a lot of dermatologists would even advocate for exactly that. If you’re getting stinky when you don’t shower for 48 hours that’s likely due to not wearing or using effective deodorant or not washing clothes well enough, often this is a washing machine or product issue not anything you’re doing wrong, it could be you’re not regularly cleaning your sheets or maybe even diet but it’s almost certainly not because you shower a completely normal amount, you probably do not stink.
That said I’m also autistic and I also do not like to shower, I find it physically uncomfortable and over stimulating to be touched all over like that. I shower ever 2-4 days, I live with my kids and they would absolutely tell me, and have, if I get stinky and it doesn’t happen often because it’s not a matter of not showering enough but the sort of stuff I listed above.
Are you sure you’re not experiencing OCD like symptoms externalizing your social anxieties and causing you to worry about being stinky? OCD and autism have a pretty high comorbidity so having obsessive or intrusive thoughts might be a better place to start investigating rather than trying to shower more since you already shower a perfectly normal amount.
Was previously diagnosed with OCD. I simply took the CBT techniques to heart and over a few years my OCD just kind of…disappeared. Although there are remaining issues, I don’t deal with a lot of intrusive thoughts on the regular. Now I’m diagnosed with bipolar I, whatever that means…
I had bad hygiene in the past (middle school me genuinely stank) and some bad memories associated with it, so now I guess I am a little obsessive about my cleanliness. I’m afraid of the social isolation and judgement passed onto twelve-year-old me will repeat, so I’m careful to make sure I’m smelling fresh.
The clothes are not a problem (although polyester does collect odor), but I will replace my sheets more often and look into laundry techniques some more.
Sink bath. Shower every few days, wash just the stinky bits the other days
