- Date posted
- 1y
Seeking clarity for autistic 8 year old's behavior
I am looking for some insight to support my 8 year old autistic daughter. She has developed health concern OCD after a bout of norovirus that hit the whole family right around Christmas (the discomfort of the nausea seemed amplified by the fact that it affected the holiday, to which she is strongly attached). She has been struggling significantly with emetophobia since then, seeking constant reassurance. We have trialed an SSRI for the past two months. While the health anxiety reassurance seeking has diminished (from maybe 70% of her day being taken up by it to more like 5%), a new kind of behavior has cropped up that we, her parents, have never seen before. It goes like this: she is doing some very minor, everyday, benign activity like picking up a stuffed animal or putting on a seatbelt. She "sets a goal" for herself (her words) to do xyz in a certain way, such as pick up the stuffed animal by its fabric tag only, not touching any of the stuffed animal's fur, or putting her seatbelt on herself without touching her skin/body with her fingers while she's doing it. If she then "fails" this "goal," such as accidentally touching the fur or herself, then she starts crying, screaming, flailing, and begging us to "get this feeling out of my body." She will hit and scratch her arms and legs, because she says this "failure" leaves her limbs feeling like they are weak, fuzzy, wobbly, numb, or "wrapped in a numbing net." It takes quite awhile for her to calm down from these episodes, and we have tried a lot of things to do so: going for a car ride, me lying on top of her, taking a walk, etc. She has a lot of patterns that she makes walking on the floor (hopping and stepping in certain ways according to lines, scratches, or shapes on the floor), but none of those patterns seem to result in these same kinds of "failures" and subsequent distress. Is this OCD-- specifically Perfectionism OCD? The element of failure really stands out to her. I have been having a hard time even figuring out what is going. Any help would be so deeply appreciated-- this has been so rough on our family.