I’m new to this community. My daughter is 14 and is suffering from what I believe is contamination ocd. She was just fine this evening and out of no where was crying uncontrollably. I’m so lost as a parent because I don’t know how to help her. I can’t even give a hug. I feel so bad just letting her cry.

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.

So thankful to have found this app 😭 my 15 year old is struggling with what is unofficially diagnosed OCD (counselor is starting the process to diagnose but she fits SO much of what we’re reading and she’s at least 4th generation OCD’r). We are in a bad spiral right now with her, especially centered around sleep and it just feels so hard. Just wanted to say thank you for helping me not feel alone.

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.