Nausea is front and center for SO many themes related to anxiety and OCD. Feeling nauseous when you are anxious is incredibly common. So it is not surprising that anxiety, and even OCD, hijack that sensation and make it a theme in and of itself.
We don’t just leave our childhood in the past. It comes with us, altering our lens of how we view life. This includes how we view and interact with our child’s anxiety or OCD.
As parents we can be hard on ourselves. The parenting journey raising kids with anxiety and OCD can come with many ups and downs. Many of us blame ourselves when our child’s anxiety or OCD doesn’t get better.
Often it is hard to get our kids into OCD therapy, and when we do, it can be an uphill battle to get them to practice those skills in between sessions. That is why I’m so excited to offer another tool to your at-home toolbox!
We all want our kids to have strong sibling relationships, but often anxiety and OCD can get in the way. Siblings might feel targeted by the child with anxiety or OCD. They might be on the receiving end of aggression or they might just feel sidelined by how much attention their sibling requires.
We may not have full control over our child’s recovery around anxiety or OCD, but we can control how we show up to their struggles. This can be tricky when our mind is bogged down with what-if scenarios.
Anxiety and OCD can take a TON of resilience. So when we have kids who generally give up easily, this can impact how they handle their mental health struggles.
Sensorimotor OCD makes people hyperfocus on bodily functions. One of those bodily functions is the need to pee. When you have sensorimotor OCD you hyperfocus on your bladder’s sensations. You might go to the bathroom over and over. You might check to see if you need to pee repeatedly.
Raising a child with anxiety or OCD can bring with it so many struggles, including our own grief and overwhelm. It is easy, and tempting, to bury our own raw emotions around our child’s anxiety or OCD struggles. But honoring and processing our feelings is equally important.
OCD doesn’t just boss the child around and tell them what to do or avoid. It loves to involve family members. Often kids just want their family to give in to OCD’s demands. It can be easy to make family members the enemy, when really it is OCD.
There are many assumptions about ERP, Exposure Response Prevention, the go-to approach to treat OCD in kids. Some parents (and therapists) don’t understand how ERP is supposed to work, how it is done and what one should expect.
OCD can be sneaky! Often people think they aren’t doing any OCD compulsions and so they don’t think they have OCD. There are a ton of mental compulsions that are often missed!
When you bring your child to a cardiologist, you expect they know all the evidence based treatment interventions to help your child. When you bring them to an endocrinologist you assume they are an expert in all things endocrinology.
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