snowbear

Hi Linil and to the forum. From what you are saying your boyfriend gave you plenty of chances to say no or stop, both before and during intercourse. He didn't force you at any point or force himself on you (the difficulty 'getting in' is normal if you are dry.) So it wasn't a sexual assault. That suggests your regret at not being more assertive and saying you weren't in the mood, combined with feeling 'assaulted' in the moment, has been playing on your mind and given your OCD something to work on. Your boyfriend sounds like a very caring and considerate person. It would be a shame to lose him because you listened to your OCD telling you he's a bad person. You have had lots of OCD themes in the past. Treat this the same way - don't engage with the thoughts and let it go.

Hi David, This must be very distressing for you. Sadly it's not uncommon for parents with OCD to be in denial that their children are being adversely affected. Happily, as the non-OCD parent there are things you can do to limit the damage. I'll warn you upfront that your partner won't like it - but for the children's wellbeing it's important to stand up to the OCD as earlier as possible and not to be dissuaded from that by pleas and threats from a distressed partner. You need to tell your wife what you are going to do first and ask if she wants to be there or not. Remember, it's not about whether she wants this to happen or not - just whether she wants to be there. Then you need to sit down with the children and explain that mum is not well. That she sometimes thinks things aren't safe to touch when they are, and that sometimes she behaves as she does because she's not well. Give examples of the trainers, ipad and post. You might like to have those items present at the talk and demonstrate that dad isn't concerned by touching them, even touching them to your face or touching your face and clothes all over after touching the post, trainers etc. Do it with a smile. Show them that there is nothing to be scared of. Tell them that mum may act scared of these things while she is ill, but that mum won't be scared of them either when she is well again. Tell them that if they aren't sure if something is safe to touch because mum avoids it, they can ask dad. And after the talk if you see any avoidance or OCD behaviours in the kids, tackle it head on there and then. Keep it simple and light. Are you scared to touch that? Shall we touch it now together, so you know it's ok to touch it? And then do so. If they get distressed then you'll have to accept they have started thinking in an OCD way themselves and are no longer just copying mum. Don't force them. It's about choosing the right way to behave because they understand for themselves there is no threat. Any OCD behaviours that persist in spite of your reassurance and demos will need to be sorted as a separate issue, same as you would if the child presented with OCD themselves. (There are books for parents and the charity runs support groups for families. We can put you in touch with them if needed.) Expect some kickback and resistance from your wife. Her denial that the kids are affected is how she squares it with herself to keep behaving as she does. At some level she'll be aware of how it affects them, and likely feeling a lot of guilt and shame which only adds to the burden OCD places on her. So you'll want to be honest with her and say the kids mental health has to come first, but that you know it's also not easy for her and you'll be there to support her too. But you can no longer stand by and allow OCD to destroy the family. Make it clear that the enemy here is the OCD, and you, your wife and the kids are fighting it together. This isn't family versus mum. Mum is not her OCD. What help has your wife had with her OCD? How much insight do you feel she has at present and would she be willing to engage with a therapist to get to a better place? Let us know how these initial steps go, and if you have any further questions just ask.

You're making a rookie error here - thinking it's either OCD or real. OCD is real. Trying to get around your anxiety just by labelling it as OCD is like saying, 'That's not a real fire' and then watching your house burn instead of calling the fire brigade. No wonder it's not working for you! You have a thinking disorder that is causing you great anxiety. The 'fault in the wiring' is the degree of anxiety is out of proportion to reality, and the interpretation of risk is unrealistic. I get it. But what you're actually saying here is,# 'I'm too scared to risk it being an over-reaction or faulty thinking on my part, so I'm going to respond with OCD rather than treat it normally like a real risk.' If you were treating it as a real risk, your response would be much less extreme. Can you see how that makes this 100% OCD, not OCD versus reality?

Hi Charlotte, Well done for getting her back under the CAMHS umbrella. I think they are so overwhlmed by numbers they say children 'aren't severe enough' just to push the workload further down the line. Aim for car/ school on Tuesday. Talk like it's happening, give her a chance to prepare for it mentally. It might be more than she can handle right now, but never assume something can't be achieved without trying it - that's when OCD wins. Going to school has huge advantages if she can manage it. Holidays leave too much unstructured time and that allows OCD to take over. If school really isn't possible for a bit, then home schooling / online learning is at least giving her something else to think about rather than allowing her to focus on the OCD 24/7. Let us know how things go next week, and good luck!

Hi Jayne and to the forum. We can certainly empathise. What help have you received for your OCD so far? How might we help?

That's a bit of a sweeping statement, Handy! It's an interesting idea, but doesn't apply to everybody who washes a lot.

Hi jo5, I've sent you a private message. Just posting here too to say you're not alone, there are people here who can and will support you, and to let other forum users know that the mod team are aware of your post. Hope to speak to you more soon.

I think anybody would! So reframe it - focus 'getting on with life' (even if I still feel anxious) In other words, don't make OCD the centre of your world. Put your energy into things that do motivate you, things you want to be doing. Then the fact it takes months rather than days to change your thinking, and countless repetitions of not engaging with your fears to get really good at ignoring the thoughts, won't faze you. Get so busy doing other stuff that OCD gets pushed out of the centre of things and back into some dusty corner you rarely visit.

Not proven either way, as far as I know. Some have normal levels, some low levels - same as in the general population. But I think there's enough evidence out there now to say with some certainty that whether an individual with OCD has low serotonin or not, the serotonin being low isn't the cause of their OCD. Similarly, boosting serotonin levels with medication won't by itself cure OCD, but it may help some people, particularly if there's an element of depression involved too. And then there's the fact there are lots of people with low serotonin levels who don't have depression, OCD, or any mental health issues. Which raises more questions than answers about what the full role of serotonin might be in our mental health. I don't think even the experts really know for sure. Maybe 'If taking SSRIs works for you great, and if it doesn't that's fine too' is the most helpful way to look at it. Leave all the arguments about cause and effect out of the equation.

Welcome back Adamski. Yay! In my opinion this trend is a backward step and sufferers would be well-advised to give such websites and therapists a wide berth. Labelling OCD according to the current topic you're obsessing about is an out-dated approach which shows a lack of understanding on how OCD works. There aren't lots of types of OCD There is only OCD - a thinking disorder where sufferers can obsess about any topic in the universe. Your aim is to recognise the pattern of thinking-and-response, rather than focusing on details around the past event and the feelings it generates in you. Whether the topic is a real life, past event, existentialism, excessive handwashing... whether the feeling is anxiety, shame, guilt, or disgust - it's all the same mechanism. Imagine if you had to re-take your driving test every time you switched to a different brand of car! Or had to re-learn how to drive from scratch because the weather was different! Once you've mastered the pattern recognition approach it's like having a screwdriver in your mental toolbox that you can use to fix your OCD regardless of why the screw has come loose. Brain Lock is still a recommended book. Not my personal favourite, but fine for those who like the way it tries to explain things. Have you applied what you learned from Brain Lock to this recent topic of past event/shame/guilt? Is it helping, and if not, where are you coming unstuck? How can we help?

Well... we may not consciously choose to have them, but intrusive thoughts don't just happen at random. They relate to what's going on in your subconscious - your fears, perceived threats, recent things you've seen or heard in the media, whatever is the current biggest no-no in society... and so on. Back in the 1990s lots of people had intrusive thoughts about HIV, in the naughties it switched to fears of being a paedophile, more recently it was fears around covid - whatever is topical and either unwanted or frowned upon by society at the time. We do, however choose whether or not to engage with them. Intrusive thoughts are universal. Everybody has them, and they occur frequently. They are a regular and normal part of everybody's day, not a big deal that only OCD sufferers get bombared with. The difference between someone with OCD and someone without OCD is how they respond to having the thought. So someone without OCD may think ,'Did I put my hand on the person's bum?... Daft idea. The things I think! Now, where was I, oh yes...' They choose not to engage with the intrusive thought and instead choose to think about something else. The same thought happening to someone whose OCD is a fear of acting inappropriately might be, 'Did I touch their bum? OMG What if...? Replay it, how close was I? Can I remember touching them? Better follow them and check they don't look upset. What if... ... etc. Their fear of doing wrong means they want to engage, want to check, they want the certainty of knowing they've not done wrong. So they choose to engage with the intrusive thought and ruminate on it. They choose not to change the topic immediately, hoping to resolve the issue first. When you're caught in the OCD cycle of fear and rumination it can feel automatic and beyond your control, but you always have the choice of what to think about, what you want to focus on. So therapy can consist of changing your behaviour (choosing to think about or do something else) and changing how much value you put on getting answers/ certainty/ avoiding your fear so that when an intrusive thought pops into your head you don't want to engage as much as before. 'Wanting' it less makes 'choosing' easier. It's very important not to confuse being told 'it's a choice' with ideas about 'doing the right thing'. That's where people become resentful or guilty or ashamed if they happen to be struggling to refocus and disengage. If someone is struggling not to engage with their intrusive thoughts that is simply a reflection of where they are at in their OCD recovery journey at that moment in time, NEVER a reflection on them as a person. There's no shame or guilt attached to wanting answers/ certainty/ wanting to avoid feeling anxious etc. Everybody wants that! People without OCD simply value the answers a bit less, so are more willing to let things go. They choose to put their energy into getting something that they want more (such as getting on with their day.) They don't choose that option because they are stronger-willed, better, more capable people. They choose it because they value getting on with their day more than they value resolving any intrusive thought issues. There's no shame or guilt in being at the stage where refocusing is still a struggle. There will be reasons why you're finding it hard, and a good therapist will help you uncover those reasons and challenge them head on until you are able to refocus at will. So, yeah, it is a choice. It's always 'a choice' what to focus our thoughts on. Just don't confuse the fact it's a choice with the idea that what you end up thinking about is a moral issue or a reflection of a weak character etc. They are totally different things.

My first thought on seeing the photo is 'Which slab is he bothered about?' It may be very obvious to you, Phil, but to me it all looks perfectly normal.

That sounds quite hopeful. Not long now until the exams are over, and maybe then you can work on getting her back into therapy. Good luck!

Do you know what she dsoes in her room James? How does she occupy her time? OCD loves idle hands and an idle mind - it quickly fills the time available with rituals or compulsions. Try to encourage her to spend more time doing something useful/ constructive that forces her to set the OCD aside for a bit, if you can.

Although you may think you're disregarding it, as @PolarBear said, it's likely you're doing some sort of compulsion. For example, every time you think of the Feared Thing, you probably think to yourself 'that's my Feared Thing' and that reaction is engaging with/ paying attention to whatever it is. Every time you call it my Feared Thing (using capitals instead of just naming it - you send a signal to your brain 'that is something I need to be careful around/ fear is appropriate.' These subversive compulsions (that you may not even realise you're doing) guarantee that you'll feel anxiety again the next time you get triggered. And the next, and the next. So it's definitely OCD. The anxiety will go down - when you genuinely stop reacting to the thing that is triggering you. That means stop treating it as anything out of the ordinary. Name it. Shrug at it. Take away the power you've given it to scare you and hold you hostage. When you go from Feared Thing to '... I didn't even notice that was there! Oh well... ... that's when the anxiety will disappear. It takes a combination of cognitive therapy (getting your head around the fact that whatever it is really is just a normal thing and nothing to be scared of) and behavioural therapy (learning to change your behaviour towards the object of your fears so you no longer even react when it's around.)

Sounds perfect to me! I'm so pleased you found my post(s) helpful, @HelpMe And glad you're on top of cybersecurity, and your tax forms! (I usually leave doing my tax return hours to before the final deadline in January. )

Absolutely, yes. To give a simple example, a lot of people without OCD will push on the handle to check the front door is locked when leaving the house. For someone with OCD, that first check creates doubt, which then leads to further checking the handle, ruminating, worrying, not trusting themselves and so on. So although it's a common and perfectly normal thing to do for someone without OCD, the person with OCD risks the creation of doubt , which then results in an avalanche of compulsions. The person with OCD must decide if they are going to check once and resist the doubt and compulsion urges that creates, or do the same as many other normal people who just turn the key in the lock, hear the clunk and walk away without testing the handle at all. To make that relevant to your situation, changing passwords regularly is recommended by some sources, others will tell you it's only necessary if you've been hacked and as long as you're using different passwords for every site (you are, aren't you? ) then changing them routinely isn't strictly necessary. So your husband might change his passwords every 3 months routinely, and you might compromise at once every year or every few years, or just on the types of accounts that are most vulnerable to hacking. Let's be clear here, I'm not suggesting an avoidance compulsion. If you needed to change your password and kept putting off doing so for whatever reason, that's avoidance. In deciding whether to change passwords frequently/ less often (- to check once/ not check the door-) it is a choice between two equally normal non-OCD approaches. So it is just that - personal choice. OCD doesn't (or doesn't have to) come into it. Personally, I think you were right to correct it. Doing so was perfectly reasonable and what many people without OCD would do. For example, when I wrote my Will the solicitor typed it off ready to fill in the date by hand on the day it was signed. But when she filled in the date it looked ambiguous - could have been 2015 (which it was) or 2005. If the Will had been contested for some reason the earlier date would have invalidated it, leaving an older Will I was no longer happy with as my 'last' will and testament. So this seemingly small issue potentially had important consequences. I chose to ask her to redo the Will and print the date more clearly. In the circumstances most people would want an important document to be unambiguous, even if they don't have OCD. Of course, some people are casual about these things, even for legal documents and wouldn't have given it a second thought. So your rule of thumb is to make it a choice between what some people without OCD would do, and what other people without OCD would do. Leave the OCD out of it completely. And leaving OCD out of it means what's done is done, and now that it's done, let it go! No need to keep questioning or revisiting what you did or didn't do.

I protectively ring-fenced my time at work, just refused to allow my OCD to affect me there. It worked brilliantly, but took a LOT of stubborn self-discipline and was mentally exhausting. I've often wondered what my career/ life would have been like if I hadn't been secretly fighting with OCD all those years. How easy work must be for 'normal' people! I don't think there are particular jobs that help with OCD, but there are certainly some that can feed your OCD - depending on what your OCD theme is about. It's such an individual matter, how you cope with the demands of a job, life, OCD... whether stress or boredom exacerbates your OCD... lots of factors. I do believe that if you're reasonably able to push yourself a bit and hold down a job that it is beneficial over not working. Unemployment leaves OCD way too much time to fester and take over. A job can force you to put the brakes on the urge to ruminate and restrict the oddity of your behaviour in public, so can be of great benefit in controlling OCD. But there can also be times when trying to work on top of everything else is more than anybody could be expected to do, so only the person going through it can say if they are able to work or not. Are you considering a job-change because of how your OCD affects your current job, louloulou, or is it a case of wanting to change jobs and not sure how doing so will affect your OCD?

Thank you for the compliments everybody. I tries me best. I get that. And I get that sometimes a message can come across a particular way, particularly on a forum where we're relying on the written word without any other clues to the tone or intention of the poster. (Maybe that's why I use so many emoticons ...or maybe I just like the smilie faces! ) I also believe that sometimes we interpret things as a scolding, or a put-down, or as provacative, or as being whatever it is we're feeling vulnerable towards at the time we read it. (Hopefully people will interpret this reply as it's intended - just me offering an opinion as part of a debate, not as a scolding or as any reflection on the person who's words happen to be being quoted to demonstrate a point. ) Oh yes! All forums attract a variety of 'types'. Types which we readily recognise because they are prevalent in every village, community, gathering or representation of humanity across the world and since the dawn of time. Like everything in life, it comes down to knowing how to best use the resources you have. As far as forums go, it's about 'take away what you find useful and discard the rest.' That goes for our OCD forums just as much as any other, and holds true for all kinds of social media, media coverage generally, and even applies to the gossip you overhear on the local bus. Along with 'we can't make somebody change their thinking' another truism is that nobody makes you feel what you feel. When we interpret something a particular way, it's us doing the interpreting. And how we choose to interpret it that determines how we will feel as a result. I'm sure we've all turned a blind eye/ deaf ear or 'willfully misunderstood' things that have been said to us in our lives, whether that's to keep the peace, to avoid falling out with a friend, to avoid getting upset over something we know isn't important in the bigger scheme of things, OR because we recognise we control how we feel at all times. We aren't made to feel a particular way by others or by our circumstances, or even by the events which happen to us in life. Something you read online makes you feel scolded? Skim past. Ignore it. The moment you recognise you feel scolded, ask yourself if you needed a scolding and if you decide you didn't, just shrug it off! Choose to think about something else, something that makes you feel how you want to feel. This is a key teaching of Positive Psychology research. We can control how we feel by choosing what to think about and how to interpret what we're thinking about. If you're strapped to a chair and being tortured, you'll likely react as any human would - blaming the torturer for making you feel awful. But even in such extreme circumstances, you remain in control of your thoughts and your feelings. If you've seen the TV drama 'Killing Eve', think of the scene where the nasty person puts Eve's hand on the hot plate of the stove and holds it there. 'Does it hurt?' she asks with a malicious smirk. Eve replies calmly and without blinking, 'Only if I let it.' How we respond, how we interpret, how we choose to think, how we choose to feel - about anything in life - is, as Victor Frankl put it, 'The last of the great freedoms.' His book, 'Man's Search for Meaning' demonstrates the point well. In the extreme circumstances of the Nazi concentration camp, there too you found all the 'types' we're familiar with on todays internet forums. He was the first modern psychologist to recognise that we control our reactions, our thoughts, our interpretation of what others say and do - and indeed of all events beyond our control - and therefore we control our feelings in any given situation. I'm labouring the point (just a bit say McW and others, rolling their eyes! )... because once you grasp this idea and run with it, it gives you great power over your OCD. Feeling like ? Recognise that you feel that way because you're ruminating like heck. Allow the intrusive thoughts to be there without engaging, switch your focus to something else, and hey presto - your feelings change! You did that, it's not magic. It's a basic rule of the universe that the change in feelings will happen. Feeling insecure and uncertain? Recognise that you're feeling that way because you're checking repeatedly and demanding certainty. Change your behaviour - stop checking - and the insecurity feeling (eventually) fades. You change how you feel by changing your behaviour. Feeling depressed? Recognise that depression results from interpreting things with a negative bias. (Lots of reasons why you might do that, including genetic, biochemical and situational, but interpreting everything through a negative lens is what every person with depression does. ) When they learn to shift that negative bias back towards normal, the depression lifts. Sometimes medication helps with the shift, sometimes it's a change in circumstances, sometimes it's cognitive therapy and knowingly pushing yourself towards the shift by choosing to change your thinking and behaviour. Whatever the mechanism of recovery, the bottom line is a shift away from the negative lens they've used to interpret the world, remember the past and imagine the future. Exactly the same with OCD. We create the misery of OCD by choosing how to interpret our thoughts and then choosing behaviours that keep us locked into those unwanted feelings. Recovery from OCD is a matter of changing the lens we use to interpret the world, remember the past and imagine the future. We often don't recognise what we're doing (interpretation and behaviour choices) is what's making us feel bad (Obviously!) And even when we do recognise we're creating our own misery, it's another step further in recovery to get to the point where you allow yourself to change your thinking, and then it takes time to get in enough practise at changing your behaviour not to fall back down the 'automatic' responses familiar to all OCD sufferers. Apply the idea, 'I control my feelings, I'm not at the mercy of what is happening to me' to anything you have to face in life and difficulties that seemed insurmountable become interesting challenges, being miserable becomes an option you occassionally choose in a perverted, self-destructive way for a controlled amount of time before you choose to shake it off and make yourself to feel something different. Having a bad day? Somebody got under your skin so much you'd happily scratch their eyes out? If that anger and frustration is how you want to feel in the moment, then go for it! But the moment it's no longer making you happy to feel so bad, change it! Switch focus, do something you want to be doing and hey presto in no time at all you're feeling how you want to feel. It's not rocket science - it's scientific fact. It's how the human mind and emotions work. (Actually, the same holds true for every sentinent being that's ever lived, from dinosaurs to fruit flies! ) And once you've grasped that truth you can manipulate fruit flies in a lab to follow particular smells (oops, wrong forum ) once you've grasped the basic truth that we control our own feelings, and aren't at the mercy of our circumstances or OCD... the world's your oyster. Right, time to let others have their say in the debate. I'm off to have some refreshments.

How much reassurance should we give each other? In my opinion the answer is simple. As much as the person needs. But- and it's a heck of a big BUT... 'As much as the person needs is a very different thing to 'As much as the person wants/ thinks they need' or 'As much as the person's OCD demands'. Either of those would have us dishing out nothing but reassurance, feeding the OCD rather than standing up to it. We all need reassurance from time to time. I still ask for reassurance now and then, though I ask once, get answered once and then move on - even if I'm not feeling 100% reassured yet. There have been times in the past when that wouldn't have been enough for me. Either 1. I was too distressed at the time to take on board the reassurance I was given or 2. I was still buying into the OCD thinking too much to allow the reassurance given to suffice. We see both of those states on the forum on a regular basis. The trick is discerning between them. They occur at different stages of OCD and require very different responses if we are to help the person to progress towards recovery. I've been on the forums for 19 years and I like to think I've got reasonably good at reading between the lines. Of course I get it wrong sometimes - I'm human after all. But often I've talked with a person previously and know them well enough to hazard a reasonable guess as to whether they are i) experiencing a relapse and not taking anything on board ii) having a wobble and in need of a kind but firm reminder of the end goal they are aiming for or iii) whether they remain 'stuck' - unwilling to stand up to their OCD and allow the advice or single reassurance to work. With newbies to the forum, initially giving some reassurance is always the right thing to do. We've not spoken to them before, we don't know the full story (let alone the bigger picture) and hazarding a guess as to which of the 3 responses they need is difficult to say the least. For those users who've been around here a while, and those users who've been offering support for a while, it's much easier to see where the person is at in their recovery journey, and therefore which response is most appropriate. It will also depend on where the person offering support is at on the particular day they reply to a post. They might still be in the early stages of learning how OCD works or having a wobble themselves. Giving reassurance can feel like the only possible compassionate response; someone who might give firm support one day might dish out unlimited reassurance another day because of where they are at - nothing to do with the poster. So another way of answering the question, 'How much reassurance should we give each other?' is 'As much a you feel is appropriate.' Some people will offer 'too much' reassurance. That's ok! Some won't be far enough along the recovery path to even recognise that they are being subtly asked for reassurance and will answer the question directly and honestly in good faith. That's ok too! Someone with more experience, or greater knowledge of the individual asking, will be along to add their thoughts and get things back on track (if needs be.) So let's not sweat it! Or argue over it. Debate it by all means Especially as non-judgemental, civilised debate can highlight issues that help other people to gain insight and understanding of their own recovery journey. Exactly. At whatever stage they are at. Based on the stage we're at and our own understanding at the time. So there's no right or wrong, just sufferers helping other sufferers. I'm sorry you think the forum is going wrong. As you say, our function is to share ideas and experiences, and offer support. Another important function of the OCD-UK charity (and therefore the charity's forum) is to educate people on how OCD works, and what the recovery journey entails. We can't change anybody's thinking for them. But it is through educating ourselves, reading, talking and interacting with others, that people learn to recognise when their thinking has gone astray and how to fix it. So, in a way, it is part of the forum's purpose to 'change the sufferer's thinking'. Otherwise we'd just be supporting their skewed, stuck OCD thinking forever. You're not alone interpreting the way we operate the forum as 'reassurance is a swear word.' Hopefully in this reply I've changed some minds ( dare I say changed their thinking ) on that. We may not be qualified therapists or official teachers, but those roles do fall within our remit. And isn't that a good thing? Better to read up on these things from a moderated source following recommended guidelines than to be left to the mercy of an unregulated internet where sharlatans out to get your cash and misinformed public are found as easily as someone with better-than-anecdotal experience and sound advice. You could argue that every human has the right to try to change another person's thinking. Free speech, democracy, debate, education in any form, TV, films, books, adverts, social media, chatting with a friend over a cup of coffee... trying to change another person's view, opinion or thinking is exactly what we all do 24/7! Of course you meant change their thinking style. I knew that. Switching from an OCD interpretation of the world to a more healthy interpretation and behaviour. You're right in one regard - the only person able to do that is the person themselves. We can educate, support, guide (and reassure!) to our heart's content. But it's up to each individual to decide for themselves that they want to change the way the interpret the world and are willing to change their thinking and behaviour. All we can do is make the best information we have to date available to them.

That's a question for your doctor, getting_there, not one our forum users can answer.

Yay! See? When you stop checking/ self-testing things improve.

Phil, your OCD seems so out of control at the moment I think you could purchase a sterile plastic bubble to live in and you'd soon find fault with it. You clearly spend a LOT of time overthinking things. What hobbies and other interests have you got that you could devote more energy to instead of obsessing about where you live so much?

My way of dealing with it would be 'Ok, I'm obsessing about this tooth. Nothing I can do about it until I've seen a dentist. I've booked an appointment, so now I need to get my thoughts onto other things and leave this line of thinking alone.' Then every time my tongue strayed to the cracked tooth or thoughts started up about it I'd force myself to let it go, refocus and get busy doing something that took my mind off it.

Hi jamesk and to the forum. When I was 7 my mother became 'contaminated' and by my teens my whole family were the source of contamination in my world. Fifty plus years on everything to do with my family still feels contaminated and I have to work hard at fighting that 'natural' feeling. So it's important not to let things coast and accept the status quo or you may all find you miss out on normal family life for years to come. Looking back, what could have helped to make a difference was talking openly about the OCD. Those are extremely difficult conversations to have, especially for your daughter who will feel guilty for feeling the way she does about family members. But brushing it under the carpet is worse, so do try to sit everybody down at some point and talk about feelings in a safe way with no judgement passed by anybody on what's said. In my case there was a specific incident which started the emotional rejection/ contamination process and the rest of my family became contaminants when they took my mother's side over mine. But often people can't identify a reason why it began and that's ok, you just work with where you're at now. This form of OCD is known as 'mental contamination' and is different to the classic handwashing 'direct contamination' or fear of germs. It 'spreads' by association so that whole cities, countries or even the whole world (!) can become contaminated. The thinking behind this can seem crazy to those unaffected by it, but a good comparison which might help thow some light on it is the Hindu caste system which is a widely held religious belief that nobody bats an eyelid at. In the caste sytem, people associated with dirty or lowly jobs are called 'Untouchables'. They 'pollute' those they come into contact with and those of a 'higher' caste will go to extreme lengths not to become polluted by contact with an Untouchable. So maybe the idea that a family member is polluting your daughter's world isn't quite so 'out there' as it first seems. With mental contamination though it's not about social rank, it's about unpleasant emotions and difficulty reconciling the emotion a person generates in you with how you're 'supposed' to feel about them. For example, in some families it may be unacceptable to be angry with your parents. One of those unwritten rules that nobody even realises is there but which gets absorbed subsonsciously at a very young age (typicaly before the child is even talking.) So when a parent- who is only human after all - generates feelings of anger in the child, there's no outlet of expression available. The unspoken anger gets internalised as a pollutant. First the feeling pollutes, then the person associated with the feeling becomes a contaminant. By that stage the initial event that caused the anger could be long forgotten by all parties, but the 'contamination' feeling remains and further contact with the contaminant fires it up again and again while the logic to it all falls further and further into obscurity. At that stage it's about addressing the fact that your daughter has certain strong feelings which are upsetting her, feelings she doesn't understand and doesn't know how to process. That's bog standard therapy stuff - the reason for the feelings being there is immaterial. Mental contamination is typically dealt with by the sufferer the same way a pollutant, germs or toxin would be. So washing, disinfecting, bleaching, avoiding, throwing out things that have become contaminated...are all typical ways of dealing with this kind of contamination. The problem is of course, that you can't wash off or disinfect away a feeling. So any rituals undertaken are at best a temporary fix that reduce the immediate emotional overload, but leave the underlying problem unfixed. Oh yeah, I can empathise with that one for sure! When you challenge her OCD it feels to her like you are threatening her very survival. So unsurprisingly she'll dig her heels in and fight back with everything she's got, setting wider and wider boundaries in order to stay safe. But OCD left unchallenged will always slowly take over. Daily life is like running on a treadmill just to stay still, which is exhausting for the sufferer. Try as they might to contain it, the OCD gradually wins. So what's the right approach? It's about getting on the same side as your daughter, so that you all challenge the OCD together. Otherwise your attempts to fight the OCD may be perceived as challenging her, as invalidating her feelings, or as forcing your rules on her without any regard for her beliefs. And you get on the same side by talking about it. By having those difficult conversations. By making it clear that you know she is not her OCD, and that you want to help her to fight the OCD, not that you just want rid of the OCD. You can learn more about mental contamination from one of our conference presentations here. Professor Radomsky is the leading psychologist in the world on this subject! So we're very lucky to have him associated with OCD-UK. His book on the subject was published in 2015 and is intended for therapists rather than sufferers, but if you have the cash to spare you might find it useful reading. It's available on Amazon books here (and probably from other book stores too.) Any further questions, just ask.