Tips on what I can do to help my husband

[janeebird]

I have been with my husband for 12 years now, married for 6. We have a 4 year old and a 15 month old. 
 

My husband had a run of bad luck with jobs since we first met and got together at 20. He’s never been happy in work and had threatened redundancies and then was made redundant back in October 2021. Our youngest son was born January 2021 and I was still on maternity leave. When he was made redundant I said I’d go back to work full time and was earning enough to support the 4 of us and told him to take his time working out what job he’d like to do/finding the right job for him. I thought this was the right thing to do but in hindsight maybe I should have asked him to get any job. 
 

He found a new job that sounded amazing and started 6 December 2021. After the first week, he told me he felt suicidal and wasn’t coping. I managed to speak to his manager (he asked me to do this) and she gave him the following week off and didn’t just want to write him off and felt he has so much potential. He had had bouts of feeling down in the past and been referred for CBT therapy but he said it didn’t help him. He spoke to my parents and my brother as he feels closer to them than his own. I managed to find a private therapist for him to start seeing. We went away with friends (a planned trip)the following weekend and he told me when we were away that he had kissed 4 other people since we’d been together. I am not sure if anything else happened but he tells me that’s it and he needs to get it off his chest and the therapist had said it may help. He stopped paying for this therapist once he got the phone calls from the NHS.
 

It wasn’t until he spoke to his mum and told her how he was feeling that she said he was diagnosed with severe OCD at 14. Nobody had ever mentioned this to me. My husband said he didn’t know. There are definite times looking back on our relationship that I’ve felt something is different or he doesn’t cope well with certain things. 
 

He had been put on sertraline 100mg and currently has a phone call from a therapist every Wednesday evening although these are due to stop very soon.

At the moment he is having intrusive thoughts about losing his driving licence. He doesn’t want to let me down he says by him losing his licence and then his job. I’ve explained he won’t lose his licence and that he’s a safe, sensible driver (all of which he knows). He panics every single day that he has to drive and begs me to reassure him constantly. I try to be very patient with him but obviously sometimes my patience wears thin sometimes. I’m working full time (often needing to work extra), sorting our young sons and doing the bulk of the housework and cooking. 

I really need some advice, help and tips of what I should be saying to my husband. 
 

He tells me that he can’t cope with the intrusive thoughts forever and one day it will get too much and he will kill himself. He gets very impatient with our 4 year old. He finds our youngest easier which I understand (he doesn’t answer back…yet). I know first hand the damage suicide does to a family (grandad committed suicide when I was 15). I don’t want my sons to go through that. 
 

Sorry this is such a long post.
 

 

[ASG]

Hi there I believe he needs to look into his medication and try some alternatives treatment because it seems out of control his feeling of suicide are an emergency. Please also take care of yourself it is not easy to look after children, work and housework find ways to relax and have a break. I wish you all the best and believe things will improve they just need a tweak. 

[ASG]

16 minutes ago, ASG said:

Hi there I believe he needs to look into his medication and try some alternatives treatment because it seems out of control his feeling of suicide are an emergency. Please also take care of yourself it is not easy to look after children, work and housework find ways to relax and have a break. I wish you all the best and believe things will improve they just need a tweak. 

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/for-friends-family/

[janeebird]

Thank you for replying. Somebody did give him a call and said they’d write to his GP to let them know his medication could be upped to 150mg.

[Gemma@OCDUK]

Hi janeebird,

I'm really sorry to hear how much your husband is struggling. If your husband's therapy is due to end soon then I would suggest he asks for further CBT within the same team, possibly with a therapist with more experience in helping those with OCD, or to be stepped up to the next level of care. It depends what service he is with now, if he is with IAPT, then the next step is his community mental health team. Waiting times with CMHT are long, so perhaps a different therapist through IAPT should be the next step. Your husband shouldn't simply be discharged if he is still struggling so much. 

It sounds like he hasn't had the CBT that has really made a huge difference and therefore it will feel like OCD will be around forever. But your husband is not alone in trying CBT many times and he just needs a good therapist to help him tackle these problems. Have you ever looked into self-help materials together? This can be a good way to learn about and tackle OCD as a team. 

We do have a couple of fantastic presentations from our online conference in 2020 that you might find helpful in understanding OCD and how to help someone with it. There’s this one by Lauren Callaghan https://www.ocduk.org/conference/conferences-across-the-uk/2020-virtual/conference-map/family/helping-family-member-with-ocd/ and another by Mark Freeston https://www.ocduk.org/conference/conferences-across-the-uk/2020-virtual/conference-map/main/understanding-why-people-with-ocd-do-what-they-do/

Gemma