Living with a sufferer of OCD

madwomanintraining

Do you live with a sufferer of OCD? How do you/they cope? My son is a sufferer and it's starting to tear our family apart, so I am looking really to share experiences and hopefully give and receive a bit of support as I hadn't realised until fairly recently how big a problem this is.

Sicard

The best treatment is CBT using systematic desensitisation.

Pollycat

Have you tried here?
https://www.ocduk.org

madwomanintraining

Laurie_Sicard-Askey wrote: »

The best treatment is CBT using systematic desensitisation.

The waiting list is almost a year here for CBT treatment unfortunately so I am trying to find ways of coping and helping him now.

madwomanintraining

Pollycat wrote: »

Have you tried here?
www.ocduk.org

I have found this site really helpful (but very scary as I realise how many people are suffering and going through hell with this illness) He isn't as bad as many people on the forum but he is definitely getting worse hence my reason for posting.

no1catman

What form does the OCD take? Is it, for example, excessive cleanliness, or re-checking doors are locked?
Do they count, how many times they 'check'? What would happen if they did one less.
I remember one sufferer thought that a disaster would happen if they didn't and it would be all their fault!
When did it start, and was there any event that happened at that time?

madwomanintraining

no1catman wrote: »

What form does the OCD take? Is it, for example, excessive cleanliness, or re-checking doors are locked?
Do they count, how many times they 'check'? What would happen if they did one less.
I remember one sufferer thought that a disaster would happen if they didn't and it would be all their fault!
When did it start, and was there any event that happened at that time?

He has had it for years in a mild form but we didn't know what it was. Now it is in the form or performing rituals everyday or else he believes things will go wrong in his life.

no1catman

This may help for more info (surprising what you can find on youtube)

- https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ocd

Ames

Bryony Gordon's book Mad Girl is brilliant and really opened my eyes up to OCD, I only really had an idea of the stereotypes before.

DomRavioli

Moodgym is a free online CBT programme. You have to sign up with an email address but it is completely free, and accesssible insstantly.

There's also lots of info on desensitisation, or even graded exposure therapy (they both are recommended by NICE, dependent on formal diagnosis).

Waves_and_Smiles

Hello there, first let me acknowledge how difficult this is for you, it is not easy living with someone with OCD who hasn't yet had treatment. Thank you for caring about your son and standing by him. I have chronic OCD which means it severely affects my life if I allow it to and affects many different aspects, often with rituals as your son has. We cannot give medical advice here but I can tell you a little of how it is for me.

I have had CBT which helped me greatly, before that I was crippled by it. The first thing to realise is OCD is about control. When things feel out of control our rituals make us feel safer, we put all of our worries and anxieties into them. So if we are anxious our OCD's will be worse as we fight to control what we are feeling. There are several stages to my OCD, first there is anxiety, then there is a ritual quickly followed by relief. So the whole time there is the repeated pattern of absolute panic, the effort to control it and then the feeling of relaxation once my ritual is completed and I feel safe again. Often one of the tricks to dealing with my OCD is finding out what lies behind the anxiety in the first place, the triggers need to be recognised.

When I first had treatment I had 35 rituals, my day was full of them repeated over and over and I could barely do anything else. What I did learn was to deal with the big ones first, the smaller ones (such a blowing on my arms in symmetry) I still have today because they give me comfort and do not stop me living my life how I wish to. They could even be described as little quirks.

Try not to become angry with your son or show anxiety, one of the most horrible things for OCD suffers is we know we are doing it and we know it is ludicrous! We beat ourselves up because we feel so stupid that we have to carry these things out, in no way do we think it's acceptable which makes us hate ourselves. It isn't a psychosis, we don't really believe our rituals will stop anything, we are just held hostage to them because the fear of not doing them is so great. We just cannot stop because we are so afraid of something hurting us or others and that fear takes over everything.

The best way I can describe the fear is you know those seconds when your chair tilts back and you know its going to fall taking you with it? That feeling of absolute, helpless panic? That is how we feel when we need to do a ritual, it is sheer terror and we know as soon as the ritual is completed satisfactorily that the fear will stop like flipping off a switch.

You will likely find your son's rituals are worse when he is worried about something, again it is the control thing of clinging to our rituals to try to make everything ok. So by all means listen to him if he is upset and try to acknowledge the worry, if he needs rituals while he talks to you that's ok, it's just him trying to control his fear.

CBT WILL help, it totally saved me from the worse of it. I do still have some rituals because mine is a chronic form but a lot of people find after therapy that they only have problems when extremely worried about something, otherwise their lives are no longer tied to it. CBT gives one techniques that can be used constantly to combat the fear and once you learn them they become second nature.

There are some antidepressants that can ease the symptoms but that is a choice for your son and yourself if you wish to see your GP. I take an antidepressant that helps ease the symptoms of mine.

Lastly, it always helped me and may help your son to realise we all have OCD, people like us are just further along the spectrum. Superstitions are OCD, throwing salt over your shoulder for example is a version of it, just far milder, as is not walking under ladders. Your son CAN get control over this and leave most of it behind him, I would say the most important thing while you wait for treatment is telling him you understand how anxious he gets and realise he isn't choosing to do this, he hates it just as much as you do and having that acknowledged can give a sufferer a lot of relief.

Hang in there, with treatment OCD sufferers can go on to live completely ordinary lives. It is very treatable and one only has to learn the techniques for managing it once, then you have them for life.