Concerned parent

[Concerned parent]

Hi my son is at uni, the last couple of months of term he developed o d, to the point it took him over an hour to wash hands he is concerned with what he touches , uses his jumper sleeves.and when he touches  certain things he will then not use his phone etc To get him through his exams I was on phone morning and night. I thought when he got home without the stress of exams he would start getting better, but it seems worse spending over 2 hours in shower and not touching things. I feel I have contributed to this, helping him turn shower on and off, washing his clothes so he doesn't have to touch them, wiping remotes, etc. How can I help in a better way? 

 

[DRS1]

9 hours ago, Concerned parent said:

Hi my son is at uni, the last couple of months of term he developed o d, to the point it took him over an hour to wash hands he is concerned with what he touches , uses his jumper sleeves.and when he touches  certain things he will then not use his phone etc To get him through his exams I was on phone morning and night. I thought when he got home without the stress of exams he would start getting better, but it seems worse spending over 2 hours in shower and not touching things. I feel I have contributed to this, helping him turn shower on and off, washing his clothes so he doesn't have to touch them, wiping remotes, etc. How can I help in a better way? 

 

Hi, I've just finished 5 years of uni and had severe OCD for the last two years of that so I have a bit of experience with that. Mine mostly focused on violent and sexual intrusive thoughts and images and my compulsions were mostly mental but OCD is OCD so hopefully I can try to offer a bit of advice.

 

The first main thing is not helping OCD. It's hard but by assisting him in doing these compulsions, you are incidentally reinforcing OCD. Don't accommodate OCD in any way, it doesn't deserve to be accommodated. The second is educate yourself on OCD and anyone else who lives at home to try and understand why he is doing these compulsions. From your description, it sounds like you can see the visible compulsions but it isn't clear if he has told you what obsessions he has that make him feel like he must do the compulsions. Self-help books are a great start. I would recommend the Break Free from OCD: Overcoming Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with CBT book by Bream, Challacombe and Salkovskis.

 

Also specifically on reassurance. If and when he feels he can talk to you about certain intrusive thoughts or images that are bothering him, you need to not provide him with any reassurance such as "well, that's not going to happen" because that is a compulsion too and will only continue the cycle. Further, it's important to not look scared or concerned by the thought content. These are just intrusive thoughts and images and yes they are horrifying but they don't mean anything about the person. We all experience intrusive thoughts, images and urges regardless of whether or not we have OCD. You don't even have to say anything in response, you just have to listen so he feels understood

 

Thirdly, try to get him to make an appointment with his GP to talk about his OCD and see if he can get a referral for therapy with the local mental health service in your area. There will be a waiting list and it could be a while so this is why the self-help book could be really useful. Make him aware he isn't the only person that is dealing with this and that there are a lot of us who deal with it. His intrusive thoughts are also not unique, it is different for him compared to the rest of us. I used to think intrusive thoughts I had were specific to me only to discover with a quick search on this forum how quickly I was proven wrong.

 

Lastly, in terms of cutting out family accommodation of compulsions, doing things like switching the shower off after a certain amount of time on him i.e. after 1 hour if he is currently showering for 2 and gradually decrease that over time that will help a lot. Hopefully this helps as a starting point and if you have any more questions or your son has, I'm sure someone on the forum will be able to help.

[Concerned parent]

10 hours ago, DRS1 said:

Hi, I've just finished 5 years of uni and had severe OCD for the last two years of that so I have a bit of experience with that. Mine mostly focused on violent and sexual intrusive thoughts and images and my compulsions were mostly mental but OCD is OCD so hopefully I can try to offer a bit of advice.

 

The first main thing is not helping OCD. It's hard but by assisting him in doing these compulsions, you are incidentally reinforcing OCD. Don't accommodate OCD in any way, it doesn't deserve to be accommodated. The second is educate yourself on OCD and anyone else who lives at home to try and understand why he is doing these compulsions. From your description, it sounds like you can see the visible compulsions but it isn't clear if he has told you what obsessions he has that make him feel like he must do the compulsions. Self-help books are a great start. I would recommend the Break Free from OCD: Overcoming Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with CBT book by Bream, Challacombe and Salkovskis.

 

Also specifically on reassurance. If and when he feels he can talk to you about certain intrusive thoughts or images that are bothering him, you need to not provide him with any reassurance such as "well, that's not going to happen" because that is a compulsion too and will only continue the cycle. Further, it's important to not look scared or concerned by the thought content. These are just intrusive thoughts and images and yes they are horrifying but they don't mean anything about the person. We all experience intrusive thoughts, images and urges regardless of whether or not we have OCD. You don't even have to say anything in response, you just have to listen so he feels understood

 

Thirdly, try to get him to make an appointment with his GP to talk about his OCD and see if he can get a referral for therapy with the local mental health service in your area. There will be a waiting list and it could be a while so this is why the self-help book could be really useful. Make him aware he isn't the only person that is dealing with this and that there are a lot of us who deal with it. His intrusive thoughts are also not unique, it is different for him compared to the rest of us. I used to think intrusive thoughts I had were specific to me only to discover with a quick search on this forum how quickly I was proven wrong.

 

Lastly, in terms of cutting out family accommodation of compulsions, doing things like switching the shower off after a certain amount of time on him i.e. after 1 hour if he is currently showering for 2 and gradually decrease that over time that will help a lot. Hopefully this helps as a starting point and if you have any more questions or your son has, I'm sure someone on the forum will be able to help.

Thank you for this, a quick question when I try to turn off shower sooner, or say for him to stop he says he will not be able to get out as he physically will feel ill, how can I reassure him. 

[DRS1]

14 minutes ago, Concerned parent said:

Thank you for this, a quick question when I try to turn off shower sooner, or say for him to stop he says he will not be able to get out as he physically will feel ill, how can I reassure him. 

Unfortunately, you can't reassure him. He needs to be able to find out for himself that his compulsions don't work and don't make a difference and a lot of that is having him be at the point of being able to take the leap of faith that the compulsions may not be helping. If he doesn't have a proper understanding yet of OCD, he may find it difficult to believe you at face value as he has been doing these compulsions for a considerable amount of time under the false belief that the compulsions are in someway preventing something bad from happening. It may mean that both of you should read the book I suggested as well as looking online (although it's better for you as the person without OCD to do this for him) as there is a lot of people with OCD that have shared their stories and talk about very similar compulsions. The physical ill feeling could well be anxiety though as well and this will go down over time if he doesn't do the compulsions.

 

The shower compulsion itself may be too difficult of a compulsion to even delay or modify for him initially. If you can, trying to ask him what he thinks he could do in terms of cutting out a compulsion first and go from there. In therapy, a therapist will be able to suggest more than I can but its a good starting point. Hope this helps.

[Concerned parent]

Thank you

 

[DRS1]

3 hours ago, Concerned parent said:

Thank you

 

No problem