What’s Your Child’s Personal Relationship like with OCD? This video is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the guidance of a qualified professional. What is your child’s relationship with OCD? They are in a private relationship that no one, not even those closest to them can see. Only they know when they are feeding their OCD. Only they know when they […]
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) are not the same. Many parents seeking treatment for OCD are not aware of that and search just for a CBT therapist. ERP is a specific type of CBT that provides evidenced-based treatment for those with OCD. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explain the difference between CBT and ERP as well as how to find a therapist trained in ERP.
OCD wants us to take its threats seriously. It wants us to debate with it, argue, and come up with solutions to circumvent the issues it presents. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I explore how these issues can show up and how we can teach our kids and teens to not get caught in OCD’s trap.
Often when our kids have OCD intrusive thoughts the first thing they do is try to get those intrusive thoughts out of their head. They might do what OCD wants them to do. They might try to not think about it. They might debate, argue and fight OCD. Or they might try to come up with a practical solution to the problem OCD is presenting. The issue with all of those OCD solutions is that they are all based on the validity of what OCD is saying. When they take the OCD intrusive thought seriously, they are already hooked into OCD. In this Youtube video I talk to kids and teens about how to not get hooked into OCD’s lies from the start!
Your child’s OCD doesn’t stay neatly in its lane. It involves everyone around them, especially their family. It will try to get family members involved in their compulsions. It will use family as a tool to grow OCD. Knowledgeable family members get this. That is why family members will often pull back their accommodations and their entanglement in growing the OCD. When family members pull back, it is common for OCD to feel the rage of not being fed. This might overcome your child or teen in that moment. In this week’s Youtube video I talk to kids and teens about how to handle the anger that comes when family members won’t accommodate their OCD and how to see the long term benefit of this type of support.
So many parents ask me, “How can I stop my child’s compulsions?” The quick answer is, you can’t. You can stop your participation in them, but you can’t force your child to not do compulsions. And even if you can, it isn’t going to bring your child long term success. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I address this common question and explore what parents can and cannot do to help their kids with OCD.
I get this question so often I thought it deserved a whole podcast. One of the first things OCD therapists often teach parents is how to pull back their reassurance. This can make a parent feel very uncomfortable and I get it. I have kids with OCD myself. Parents want to know they are doing the right thing, especially when everything feels counterintuitive.
One of OCD’s most powerful weapons is the threat that if the compulsion is not done, something bad will happen. This will look different for each person depending on their theme, but the overarching message is, your worst fear will come true if you don’t do what I want. In this week’s Youtube video I am teaching kids the idea of OCD magical thinking and I explore how they can entangle themselves from this threatening relationship.
Compulsions are often missed by parents and therapists not trained to treat OCD. Sometimes our kids will be doing something right in front of us and we’ll miss it. It is easy to do when OCD has a million different disguises. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore some commonly missed compulsions and what to do when you accurately spot a new weed growing.
How our kids talk to their OCD can make or break their long term progress. Do they argue, debate or try to distract themselves from OCD’s banter? Or do they outsmart OCD accepting the thoughts or even sarcastically agreeing with them? In this week’s Youtube video I talk to kids and teens about how to talk to OCD in a way that will propel their progress.
One of OCD’s most powerful weapons is the need to know things for certain. This can happen in so many OCD themes. . OCD convinces you that you won’t feel relief until you know *for sure*. The only problem is we’ll never be 100% certain about anything? So, in this week’s Youtube video I talk about how to handle OCD’s taunts about uncertainty and how to push back with your own powerful weapon – acceptance.
As therapists, we teach people with OCD to accept their intrusive thoughts without doing compulsions. We might even suggest that they sarcastically agree with their OCD thoughts so they don’t fall into the trap of arguing with OCD. But what if OCD uses those skills against them? What if OCD tells them that because they are able to accept or even sarcastically agree with their intrusive thoughts that somehow they are true? In this week’s Youtube video I talk to kids and teens about how OCD can try to outsmart them and how they can stand their ground.
OCD is not always about a fear, sometimes it is about a feeling. Kids with OCD can have intrusive feelings around disgust. They can have issues where things don’t feel just right. They can be hyper focused on bodily sensations like their breathing, blinking, heart rhythm and bladder. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore how these types of OCD themes show up and how to do ERP (exposure with response prevention) with this type of issue.
When kids have Moral OCD, intrusive thoughts they are a bad person, it can be hard to discipline and set boundaries. It can also hit their self-esteem on a level that makes it hard to manage. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk to parents about how to navigate the minefield of discipline, redirection, self-esteem and boundary setting in kids with Moral or Scrupulosity OCD.
