- Date posted
- 4y ago
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Hi! I am 13 and one of my themes is mental contamination. I used to go to the hospital weekly believing I had appendicitis. Blood tests were a regular thing. ERP has helped tremendously. It sounds like your daughter is quite scared. I don't know her so I could be WAY off, but it seems to be that after she did ERP once she realised how hard it was. Unfortunately it is one of the only ways for your OCD to improve. I once had to go to school with a pounding headache and blotchy vision as part of ERP, because it was just a migraine and I panicked about it being other things and researched everything on the planet. I still get these thoughts and Coronavirus hasn't helped, and I still sanitised my hands up to my elbows, but it's a lot more manageable than it was before, and all of that is thanks to ERP. One of the things that I can do now is gardening. It is so relaxing and I'm so glad it isn't such a problem to me any more. Your life is so much more free when you don't have so mmany compulsions knocking at your door. Now that that theme isn't so bad, I have more time to focus on the others. I hope this helped in some way! I've been living with OCD since i was around 6 or 7, so I've come to learn a lot about how horrible it is, which has fuelled my determination with ERP
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Thank you much. You are a very mature young lady and should be so proud of what you have achieved. I understand that the. Fears feel like it’s Life or death so understand how scared she is. Your mum and dad must be so proud and your message to me will inspire many other teenagers living with this awful Bully. Ocd is the illness and The doubt is the symptom, well done for facing your fears and confronting the bully. It’s true the things you fear like the mental contamination and the bogies and snot ( my daughters triggers) won’t hurt you but OCD will. Wishing you an amazing life, I know from My daughters suffering what you have been through. You are an inspiration!!!!!!!!!!! I hope you don’t Mind if I Message again at Some point to ask your advice. Take care Best wishes from a mum who just wants to help her daughter x
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Of course! Ask any time I would be happy to help! OCD is hard and I haven't nearly recovered, but that what this app is for! I seem very mature now but I promise that a lot of the time I am not, OCD brings me down ?
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Also I completely forgot to mention earlier but it is my recommendation that you start of battling the smaller compulsions and make your way up, as I have a lot of compulsions that are too big and rooted to fight right now, but I know that if I start off small I will one day be able to make the big compulsions at least a little easier to handle. I hope your daughter find OCD a little easier soon, and thank you so much for wishing me well, I hope my OCD eases off soon too. It's hard for everybody, no matter who you are, OCD or not, in this difficult time, so I hope you and your whole family are safe and happy
- Date posted
- 4y ago
I wish I could say that I fully understood your daughters compulsions - I do not as my compulsions for each form including this one are very different, but I am very pleased that you believe that i was helpful, it made me feel very happy. I would just like to say that i admire you greatly, you are clearly caring and passionate and will do anything to help your daughter, it reminds me of what my mum does every day and it's great to see how supportive you are. You're also very inspiring and other others should strive to be as accepting as you are! X
- Date posted
- 4y ago
@EvaJazz Thankyou xxxxxx best wishes and I hope you have a gorgeous day xxxx
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Bless you, Thankyou for sharing this with me. I have sent her the link for NOCD but she won’t go On the chat rooms - she used to have intrusive thoughts when she was about 8 they seems to go Away and then At xmas Start to Come Back and Now Turned To this sort of thing, how do your parents help you , if we don something she doesn’t like She will have a Major Panic attack and gets so stressed and I don’t like to see Her with the discomdort, she can be quite horrible to xxx I’m so glad you have had the strength to fight this nasty bully xxxxxx
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Well my mum has helped by helping me make mind maps and other things like charts of different kinds of ERP, and encouraging me. Sometimes she'll put me in a situation that gives me anxiety, and I'll dislike her while its happening, but I thank her so much once we've moved past it. It's so great that you're making such an effort to help. Another thing I do is I keep a journal. I write all of my compulsions in the front of the book and what I fear will happen if I don't do it, then I'll tweak the compulsion so it's a little more lenient, and then write whether the fear came true or not. When you look back at it it really shows you how the routines aren't too important. Nothing will completely eliminate the thoughts and fears, but this definitely helps. Also maybe buy her a pair of gloves (latex or gardening, maybe even rubber gloves) and have her do some light gardening. This way she won't get dirty but she'll get more comfortable around dirt? I don't know much about your daughter so I'm not sure if this will be too much, but it definitely helped me. I get intrusive thoughts too about multiple different things, and facing my fears is a very effective form of ERP. I hope this helped!
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Have you watched Unstuck https://www.ocdkidsmovie.com/ together? It might be a gentler way of opening the conversation. The book "Talking Back to OCD" is also a great parent resource. Also here is the iocdf kids and parents pagehttps://kids.iocdf.org/
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Yes thankyou I’ve watched it and my daughter is having therapy - it’s just so hard To Know sometimes if she just doesnt want to do the things I ask like tidy then mess Around the place she sits Or try And get the matted tangles out of her hair that she has Neglected. She has started some ERP but doesn’t push herself and when the therapist over Skype says so This Etc she is like Mum I don’t want to mum !! And it’s Hard and if I Keep on at her she just wants To Argue And fight and says it’s Me making her so It - But we have to Live with it too, it’s like walking on egg shells ! To be honest, it is like she doesn’t care what it’s doing to rest of us Only her, I’m a Type 1 Diabetic so it isn’t helping me being stressed and upset alit if the time when everything has to Turn Into a Big thing. Sometimes I just don’t want to be here so I don’t have to watch her Like this But I have to be the strong one and take what’s thrown at Me . I Keep saying we aren’t going to do Ocd - but when she won’t eat the food or Coe Into the room when u r facing her incase of Nose Breathing or you itch your Nose it’s hard. I will just have to be patient - She Shows Know Interest in reading or watching anything- at the No it is Lock Down But she will have to Go back to School when Back Open And it will Be so hard For her. I have Had Inspirational message from a young girl, who is doing so well. So hopefully my daughter will see soon that this is the way to go. Thankyou
Related posts
- Date posted
- 22w ago
Having a really rough night tonight. Currently I'm having a lot of contamination obsessions and compulsions with using the bathroom and when I use it I usually end up spending at least an hour and a half including all the cleaning rituals and showering afterwards and I just started seeing a new therapist to help with this. Tonight it unfortunately hit me in the middle of the night at like starting at 1 am and finishing close to 3 am. This ended up making both my mom and dad really angry with me and this is not a new situation. For context, my dad doesn't believe in mental illnesses at all and my mother is better and much more understanding, but still doesn't believe it's real to an extent. With my mom being more supportive than my dad, it leads to arguments between them a lot especially ever since they brought me home (I recently graduated college and my OCD got to the point where I was unable to have a job or function normally in taking care of myself by living alone). My mom tends to lash out at me when she gets stressed about these arguments with my dad over me because she can't talk back to him and that in turn usually causes me to spiral and get worse and so the cycle continues. This recent time my dad started yelling at me from downstairs because I was flushing the toilet too much for his liking and my mom said some hurtful things to me. I understand that it's not easy living with me especially right now and I can see why they're upset but I really am trying to get better but I can't just get better overnight and automatically be able to control all my compulsions, especially with the severity they're at right now. I'm not really sure how to navigate my family situation like this with a lack of a support network or someone in my family who believes that what I'm going through with OCD is real and it's not just me choosing to do these things. Has anyone else experienced a similar home situation and have any tips on getting through it?
- Date posted
- 19w ago
My ocd is ruining my relationship with my kids. Because of the intrusive thoughts I avoid being close to them, hugging or cuddling up to watch tv. My ocd is either telling me I wouldn’t care if harm came to them or it turns everything into something sexual or inappropriate. For example, my daughter wanted to show me how long her nails are so she started scratching my arm gently. It felt so nice and relaxing and I immediately panicked because I was scared the ocd would cause a groinal and I don’t ever, ever want a feeling like that connected with my child even though I know it’s the ocd causing it and not me i’d still feel horrible. I just want to be a normal loving affectionate mom and I can never be that for my kids because of ocd😪 I don’t see any other parents posting about going through this or commenting that they do and how they cope. I feel so alone and defeated.
- Date posted
- 17w ago
Every day my ocd makes sure there’s a new reason for me to stay trapped in my mind rather than being the mom I want to be that my kids need. Instead i’m stuck in my head depressed and pushing them away. The other day I was braiding my daughter’s hair like I always do and her hair is really long so when I get to the end of the braid I can see her butt in my peripheral vision and I looked down and I immediately got upset asking myself why did I look down?(the ocd has made me question everything I do now). I know it’s just because I was at the end of the braid and I just looked because I was already looking in that direction. A normal person wouldn’t even think twice about it. There was no inappropriate reason behind it at all but of course my ocd latched onto the situation and said I looked down because I wanted to look at her butt. I was so upset and said to myself “I don’t understand how the ocd started an intrusive thought because she was wearing baggy pants. I could understand if she had on tight pants and her butt was more noticeable” and the only reason I said that is because usually the only time my ocd starts intrusive thoughts telling me i’m looking at my daughter in a wrong way is when she has on leggings or a crop top or bathing suit ect. Now my ocd twisted what I said to mean that I like looking at her in tight pants. Nooo! That’s not what I meant but now the ocd won’t stop trying to make me believe that. I don’t ever look at my children in any inappropriate way. I hate this. I hate ocd and I can’t live like this anymore.
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