When your child is trying to beat OCD they are playing chess with a very skilled player. They make their move, OCD makes its move. OCD is always trying to outsmart and outthink their efforts.
When you have OCD you hand over all power to a glitch in your brain. You allow OCD to construct rules, beliefs and compulsions that hold you prisoner. Unfortunately the more you feed this OCD glitch, the bigger the glitch grows. The rules morph, the OCD compulsions shift, and the cycle becomes never ending.
OCD is an octopus with sticky tentacles. Those tentacles can glom onto almost anything. They can watch, hear, or observe anything that can, in return, become a new OCD theme. The issue isn’t what they hear or watch, the issue is how big and sticky the tentacles are. The goal is to build skills and knowledge to shrink the octopus and part of that is learning all about OCD.
The math is simple. The more compulsions our kids do, the bigger their OCD will grow. And yet, OCD can make it feel more complicated in their head. It can make them go to the mental gym weighing out the dangers. It can make them calculate the risks. It can make them believe that their safety or even their identity is at risk.
So how do they stop fueling their OCD? First, they should learn what things are compulsions. Kids (and parents) often miss compulsions that only consist of avoidance, accommodations or mental activities. Second, they need to build their muscles to not fuel their OCD. The best way to reduce OCD is to cut off the fuel line. That can take time, patience and perseverance – but it is the sure fire way to reduce OCD symptoms in the long-term.
OCD can make our kids do a ton of nonsensical things, including touching or tapping objects or people. This can happen due to all sorts of OCD intrusive thoughts. Perhaps something bad will happen if they don’t touch it. Maybe OCD says it won’t feel right until they do? Regardless of why OCD is demanding them to do it, how do they stop it? It comes down to how they would handle any OCD compulsion. OCD wants to be fed. It is an itch that wants to be scratched. The reality is, the more you scratch it, the more it itches. It is a vicious cycle that offers no long term relief. In this week’s YouTube video for kids and teens we talk about how to handle touching or tapping compulsions. Remember all compulsions can be handled in this same way.
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