I can’t take living with my ocd kid anymore.

It’s frustrating for sure, so try to figure out what you need to understand his/her OCD and have empathy and what your child needs to feel supported and get better. Frustration can cause poor decisions or words used that children process differently because they’re emotionally vulnerable as their brains are still developing. Even if the child is older, mental illness leads to emotional vulnerability. So take a step back and breathe to soothe your mind, like using mindfulness (which helps me and a lot of people a ton!), and then approach it. Detecting parental frustration is easy in mentally ill individuals, as I know well personally (I have heightened awareness), which can make it worse if their OCD soothes them to think they can control something. Understanding and empathy is first. Attend to your needs when possible so you can better support your child to be happy and get better knowing he/she has a supportive person and/or system. Growing up, my father had no empathy or understanding of me as a person or what I was going through being bullied at school everyday for 12 years. My depression was something I could grow out of to him and he never supported me or told me “we’ll get through this together”, which is all I wanted was someone who understood. With no friends, it led to the loneliness I still feel today. I could tell when I’d start talking about my depression that he would change in his listening, speech, and tone to show he just didn’t care. So please have empathy and understanding by doing what you need to get that solid foundation of OCD, such as articles about what OCD is and how to help someone get better.

You may want to look inward and try to see what issues you are dealing personally that make you feel unable to help with your child’s needs. Good parenting starts with parenting the parent. Good luck.

It’s very difficult, try maybe educating yourself a bit more. I know it’s hard dealing with someone whom has a mental illness. But since I don’t know very much of how your life has been with your child there’s only so much i can say.

be patient. be loving. be understanding. i know it’s hard. but remember it’s also harder on your child as well.

I understand that it must be difficult. It may help to read about the illness and learn about it, there are plenty of great websites out there with lots of information and support. I know that it must be frustrating as a parent but please remember that it will also be difficult for your son/daughter to cope with. From my experience, I found that having supportive parents really helped me to cope better as OCD can be a very isolating and lonely illness so to have my family understand my difficulties made a big difference. Your child will really appreciate you being there for them. We are all here to support you, if you would like help to understand OCD better, I am sure we can try our best to help you. I hope you don’t mind me asking, has your child got support from mental health services? If so, they may be able to help you to support your child.

Your child needs to know that you support them. By getting upset or angry at them for having OCD, isn’t very therapeutic or helpful. This disorder isn’t something that we can help. It is just is a part of who we are. It might be helpful to get your child some form of therapy or learn about ways to help them deal with their anxiety.

Therapy for yourself may be an idea too.