My husband has contamination ocd and I try to be supportive and learn the most I can but he needs to take the lead and confront his anxiety. He tends to try to avoid and make his anxiety better with rituals. Even with professional help, he hasn’t consistently done ERP. I don’t know what to do anymore; it makes my general anxiety worse. At some point he needs to help himself. How does a person get to that point? Is there any other spouses of people with ocd out there?

How debilating is it?

@hello love I am a mother of an Pure O daughter. And I 100 feel your pain. I came in this app to better try to learn and be more empathic to her. It’s been super helpful. But the daily struggle is really Caregivers need support too! It’s hard to see the suffering of an OcD person so it’s easy to become dismissive of their pain. I wish there weee support groups for spouses and parents so we could learn how to be more helpful but also push them out of bad habits.

Hey @hello love. I used to be like your husband where I'd had therapy and had all the resources to help me but I still avoided doing anything or would minimally try. I did this because I didnt feel ready to confront my ocd properly. The fear of change scared me more than OCD itself. But, what helped me actually start doing something was my family found my list of OCD compulsion that I'd written before for my therapist and they encouraged me to pick a compulsion everyday and I'd have to not do some of the compulsion or try none of it. It was super stressful but then I'd go talk to my family as soon as I'd done it to explain how I felt and they would try and reassure me. Really made my OCD better. Also, I had positive affirmations and words of encouragement stuck around the house where my compulsions would start and I'd have to read them.

I can imagine it being emotional and stressful seeing your husband do the rituals. Maybe try going to see his therapist with him? And show that you're going to be his support when he falters. Things can take time but it's obvious you care a lot about him or you wouldn't have come on here and hes lucky to have such encouragement from you so thats lovely. I hope that helps. Dont forget if you speak to the therapist as well they will be able to give you a better understanding of what hes going through, offer you support through this and you might both find ways to encourage him to do ERP. Best of luck

To answer multiple questions at once: -I have gone to the therapist with him before which did seem to help. -He ranges from periods were it seems like he is mostly ok to periods where he just melts down Thank you all for your responses!