Hi I would like to get help for my daughter, her OCD and intrusive thoughts don’t let her have a social life. She is very reluctant to search for help, and as she is a young adult many therapists want her to come on her own but the thing is she can’t do it on her own! I read somewhere in the website or IG page that you support families too.

My little sister is 13 we’ve taken her to a child psychologist and she was diagnosed with OCD and social anxiety and I believe germaphobia. The psychologist said that he can’t properly diagnose her with autism until her anxiety symptoms are treated. But I am very positive that she is also autistic as I am autistic and know the symptoms vary well. She was given a medication at a low dose, I don’t remember what kind, she had been taking it even tho she did not want to for a couple of months. It seemed to be helping her anxiety immensely but I believe she is scared of how the medication changes how she feels and she doesn’t like the taste. So they switched medications and that one was even worse because the taste was too strong she didn’t even try it for more than a day so there’s no way of knowing if that one was better for her or not. These are both liquid medications btw we used juice for her to drink it. Since then she hasn’t taken any medication and she has said that she doesn’t want to. We can’t force her to take the medication as that would obviously be counter productive. But since then her ocd and germaphobia have gotten progressively worse. On top of not wanting medication she doesn’t like the idea of using any coping skills like deep breaths or breathing exercises to calm down and doesn’t like the idea when I talk about ERP or therapy or any kind of treatment that could help. It seems all the ideas either make her uncomfortable or scare her. I fear somewhat that my own ocd compulsions have made her think that this is normal and doesn’t need treatment and I don’t know what to do to help understand that treatment and change isn’t scary. I also fear that I’m not approaching this right and my mom doesn’t understand ocd like I do so I feel like it falls on me to help her through this and help my mom understand what we need to do to help her. I’m sorry this is so long. thank you for reading this. She’s really struggling and it’s affecting my own mental health too and I don’t know what to do. If anyone has any tips or advice please that’s all I’m asking for.

Hi. My 15 year old daughter is just getting started with her OCD journey. We have only so far done 2 intake sessions with her therapist. It seems like in past week her anxiety has been getting worse. She goes to church camp tomorrow for 5 days. Any advice things to say to help reassure her without fueling the fire? . Or any tips your kids have done to work through the anxiety and panic when away from home? She has very negative thoughts about herself/appearance, contamination. I’m just worried how the week will go. She has been having difficulties even on family outings this week, feeling overwhelmed, panic, wanting to go home. Thanks in advance.

Hello, I’m a mother. My son is 17 and he has contamination OCD. We have been trying different ways to support him but he refused to see any therapist. He is struggling with paranoia and intrusive thoughts. Those thoughts make him so angry that he get yelly, throwing and breaking some furniture, and just yesterday he put a hole in the wall. He admitted that these didn’t help him feel any better, in fact it made him feel worse (because he didn’t want to act as such). We are doing our best to support him, talking with him but he refused to talk about those intrusive thoughts and paranoia. What do you suggest me to do? What would be helpful for me to do so he can talk with me more? We desperately want him to get help but he wouldn’t. Thank you in advance!