John Green’s new movie Turtles All the Way Down goes a long way in helping the OCD community educate the world about OCD. But should your child or teen with OCD see the movie?
As parents we are often in the line of fire when it comes to our child’s overwhelm. When dealing with anxiety or OCD we can feel like we are our child’s punching bag. The truth is, physiologically our kids are often looking for a push-pull conversation. It is easier to see you as enemy #1 rather than facing anxiety and OCD head on.
It can be hard to know how to beat OCD and even harder to find an OCD therapist with the expertise to guide you through it!
That is why I created my new book, Crushing OCD Workbook for Kids. I took all my clinical skills from my practice and poured it into this book so kids can learn all they need to know one engaging activity at a time.
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.
How do you define success when it comes to getting anxiety or OCD under control? What does “recovery” look like to you? What does it look like to your child? How we view success and how we convey it to our kids is critical. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I explore what a healthy view of “success” looks like and how to communicate that effectively to our kids.
Many of you know that we suddenly lost my husband due to a blood clot in 2021. It has been a bumpy journey with grief for me and my children since then. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I discuss how I’ve helped my kids with anxiety and OCD navigate grief, what I discovered about loss and my new children’s grief book.
Shaun Flores had been suffering from OCD for years without knowing it. He hopped from OCD theme to OCD theme, listening to OCD’s lies and searching for certainty with each new worry. It wasn’t until 2022, when he finally met the right therapist, that he learned that all of his fears had one explanation, OCD. Shaun has turned his OCD pain into a passion to advocate. Since his diagnosis he has added a new face to the OCD advocacy scene. A face that was desperately underrepresented. As a black man, he is helping normalize a disorder that doesn’t care about race, ethnicity or gender. In this week’s episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I had the honor to talk to Shaun about his journey with OCD and the incredible work he is doing to help others.
Often kids and even parents are focusing on the wrong thing when it comes to OCD.
They’ll ask:
How can I make these thoughts go away?
I’m doing therapy, why are the thoughts still there?
How long does it take to make these thoughts or feelings leave?
These are the wrong questions. None of us have the power to stop intrusive thoughts or feelings. The only thing we have the power over is how we respond to these thoughts and feelings.
Helping Kids Understand the Difference Between Obsessions and Compulsions The biggest gift we can give our kids with OCD is knowledge. The more they understand how OCD works, the more effective they’ll be at crushing it. One of the biggest areas of confusion is the difference between obsessions and compulsions and why it matters. In this week’s Youtube video, I explain to kids and teens […]
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