Janejay

Anyone able to help with an answer to this?

Thanks that’s great - really helpful

Hi Ashley I’ve just spoken to Tilly about the options you suggested for treatment and she’d like to try getting referral to the specialist centre in Oxford. Can you get in touch to explain what I have to do next please?

I’ve just been told over the phone by Derbyshire CAMHS that my daughter should get an initial assessment in the next 1-2 weeks. I asked what that meant in terms of how long she needs to wait for treatment and the nurse wouldn’t say. Just said I’d have to wait for that call. I don’t understand what the process is to be seen. What’s likely to happen next? Does this mean she’s now about to start treatment? Or are there more hoops to jump through first? Can anyone help explain how this works?

Thanks Zoe that makes a lot of sense. It’s a lovely reply. At the moment the OCD is making it really hard to decide on that third subject because she struggles so much with all decisions especially when either option might be the right thing.

I’ve emailed Ashley as I couldn’t get through on the phone. Not heard back yet but I’ll try calling again tomorrow.

I'm writing this on behalf of my daughter. She wants to know how it is studying for A levels with OCD. The OCD affects her reading and writing (slows both) and means everything takes more time than it should. She's applied to do art and sociology and then is undecided on the third subject. Art and sociology are both at A level, but art has lots of coursework as well as the final exam. This is starting September 2020. She's then got the possibility of photography A level (entirely coursework examined), criminology BTEC or psychology (at A level or BTEC). She's worried about overloading herself with course work or exam stress. Has any one got experience of doing these subjects though A level or BTEC/ advice for her? Thanks!

Thanks, those are really good ideas. I think we might try gardening as she’s pretty interested in plants and says she will help me with the garden. I‘m up and down. I get really optimistic when she has a good day but then find it hard to be patient - I just want her to get better! I really struggle to keep my temper at times when she’s rude or aggressive. I thinks she’s not really aware of how horrible she can be. But finding this forum is helping me realise I’m not alone and not imagining things. Getting the balance between helping her and preserving time for myself is tricky but I think I’m starting to go in the right direction now.

I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. She’s not buying without permission. Thankfully I don’t have that to deal with. I’ll try working on the concept of fitting in not being dependent on clothes some more, though as you say it’s really hard to do with a teenage girl. It’s also something all her friends agree with her on. Big source of arguments.

Pixie it sounds as if you are going through a terrible time. I’m not expert but wanted to reply to let you know you aren’t alone. Are you able to speak to the GP yourself to explain more fully that this is OCD and that it is affecting everyone severely? Can your midwife help with getting the message through? Your health is also being affected already and you obviously fear worse, so it’s important help is given. If you are worried your husband might hurt himself or you you need to say so. I can’t see any reason why he can’t be given medication, but even with it it’s going to be 4-6 weeks before it takes effect and maybe longer to find the right dose and drug. So you need some help sooner. Have you tried talking to him about what exactly he fears? It sounds as if the fear of the virus might be combined with fear for you and your baby. I’m finding the Breaking free from OCD book recommended on this forum very helpful in helping me to understand how OCD works and it might help you talk to him about what’s going on in his head. Im sure others with more experience will reply too but the very best of luck with getting the help you all need.

She’s 16 and compulsively looking for clothes on her phone because she’s convinced she won’t fit in and make friends at college without the right clothes. As well as spending hours of her time in the day and through the night she wants me to help narrow down around 100 items she’s picked out as possible. Repeatedly. She says it’s just too hard to do other things without sorting out the clothes. I don’t want her doing this as it’s making her really unhappy and taking over her life. I’ve tried agreeing to look at a limited category of clothes with her, or a limited number of items with her in return for her doing what I want her to do and also limiting the time we spend on it using a stop watch. She just tries to carry on and gets angry if I stop or try to remove the phone for a short time. Should I get tougher? I’m explaining this is a compulsion and I can’t afford to buy more but it’s not going in. Will I do more harm by taking the phone away?

Thanks so much for replying! Our high school has no mental health worker and wouldn’t make any changes when we asked. It makes me really angry. We wanted for her to drop a subject to take the workload pressure off but they wouldn’t agree. Art was causing a lot of issues as she was being encouraged to produce near photographic work but the art teacher was openly hostile to the idea that this was a problem. Now she’s not going to take exams so there is no school work to do and all her structure has gone. She’s not agreeing at the moment for me to talk to college about how they can help. I’m not sure if I should contact them anyway without her consent? I've read a couple of OCD books which were really helpful as they helped to confirm that what she does is what other teens do and I’ve just ordered the teen version of breaking free from OCD.

Please someone reply. I’m struggling to get her to do anything. She just stays in her room in bed

I’m sorry this is so long ! My daughter is 16 and is due to start a college in September. She’s been showing OCD symptoms for years which we first went to the GP to discuss 2 and a half years ago as we were concerned they were getting out of hand with the start of GCSEs. Unfortunately our suggestion was dismissed and we’ve been back and forth while the symptoms gradually worsened. I wasn’t as well informed then as to the variety of form OCD can take. We were told to access help through school which took a very long time to get her to agree too but then turned out to be no help at all. Finally in October we were given details of an NHS short term therapy service and went on that waiting list. The GP referred her to CAMHS after Christmas this year largely I think because they were concerned about the effect on my mental health too. We’re now at the stage where she and I are sure she has OCD but we have no diagnosis. The short term therapy came through recently but they’ve told us it’s not appropriate for her so they won’t treat her. This is because she struggles to talk to strangers. I’m trying to help her with this but it’s genuinely difficult even though she really want to get help. I’m not sure what to do. We’re told CAMHS is unlikely to see her until at least September and I don’t know what we can do next. She’s struggles with feelings of things being ‘wrong’ and often can’t explain what wrong ‘it’s just not right!’ She feels she has to straighten or tuck in bed clothes, cuffs, sleeves, hair, socks, belts etc until they feel ‘right’ and is not getting to sleep until very late. Washing, teeth cleaning and showering take a long time as she feels the need to be sure she has cleaned thoroughly and she can be triggered by unexpected mess. Homework and revision was taking hours and hours to do as she constantly needed reassurance about decisions, words used and if her work was right. Any research or open ended task was even worse as she couldn't decide when she was finished or what to choose to work with. Revision was also a problem as she felt compelled to use all possible revision tools instead of being able to choose just one and she was continuing rewriting revision cards and notes. This was all making her life entirely about school to the point she was missing school due to the overwhelm and tiredness. At school she hid a lot of the effects but as time went on it got harder. We weren’t believed when we tried to explain her difficulties because she had good grades. Partly from staying up until 3 am to revise! A lot of her compulsions involve reassurance seeking from me and repeating over and over ‘I don’t know what to do’. If I don’t answer in the ‘right’ way she gets angry and this keeps repeating for hours. Sometimes hugging works, sometimes it’s not right. If I leave or I’m not there or working she’ll text me 20-50 times and call my phone over and over. I have to switch it off. This is usually triggered by her feeling she has things to do but can’t manage (school work, getting up, showering, buying clothes for college, art things she’d like to do -really any task will cause this). She is very reluctant to do things without me and wants me to be with her. She’s particularly triggered by things involving choice and uncertainty and the current 3 worse things are clothes shopping, deciding on which college to go to /thinking about how she’ll manage to get there and function and resuming some art work (her favourite subject but she’s not produced anything since we went into lockdown and was no longer under pressure to do so). She spends months researching options, wants me to help make every decision and answer questions about all the uncertainties. I’ve ordered and returned so many clothes I’m embarrassed about it and she still wants to try more. This is also partly because she is very sensitive to fit and feel and things feeling ‘right’. But even if we buy something she then starts looking for the next thing which is better or slightly different. I am managing to set some boundaries around her reassurance seeking and am no longer so closely involved in her waking and bedtime compulsions and she’s better at allowing me to work. I spend a lot of time reminding her that she’s not in danger and the feelings are just bad feelings which will go and that she doesn’t need me to decide or reassure her ( though I’ll always give her a hug). It just involves so many things! one positive development of being home is she’s started to do the Joe Wicks PE which seems to help calm her and I’ve now managed to get her to do it without me. She’s also done baking and some cleaning without me. But I don’t know how she’s going to decide on a college or manage to be at college. It is difficult to discuss what help she will need with them given we have no medical help or diagnosis to support what I’m saying and her OCD isn’t a more well known type. She wants to take A level art, sociology but (unsurprisingly) is not sure about the third one. Could be psychology or criminology. I’d really appreciate any advice you can offer.