To ask if anyone has any experience of therapy that has worked for teenager with OCD?

[deaperatelyunhappyandscared]

My dd15 has OCD, it usually involves rituals that she has to go through when showering / bathing and getting dried / hair etc.
She also gets hyper fixated on various things to do with her health and her appearance.
In the last month or so, it’s become so extreme, that her shower rituals are taking hours. She knows in her head that this isn’t “normal”, but feels that she has no control over it.
She has an occupational therapist, but it’s so difficult to get her to engage with any help, it hasn’t really made a difference. She’s seeing a psychiatrist in a few weeks to discuss the possibility of medication.
It’s exhausting for her and me, I’m a single
parent with one income and it’s becoming a financial strain. Obviously her mental
health is my first priority, so I do everything I can to try and help.
Does anyone have any experience of therapy that has been successful in the treatment of this type of OCD? Or any books you would recommend?
I know we can’t continue like this, but I’m so stuck.

For me CBT wasn’t helpful, as a lot of the exercises just reinforced the problematic way I was thinking and it didn’t help me with accepting uncertainty. It was when I tried hypnotherapy and Acceptance and Commitment therapy that I finally got on the road to recovery. Now I only get a bit obsessive when I’m really under stress but can recognise it and not respond to it.

My sister had hypnotherapy for her OCD and it was life changing. She was pregnant at the time and one of her obsessions was food contamination so she wasn't eating, it was very frightening.

Hi, I had suffered my whole life with OCD until I finally found a really good therapist (private) combined with Sertraline. (This took the edge off so that I could focus on the therapy).
My parents didn’t take me to a doctor or try and get me help, I wish they had as I feel like I wasted so many years of my life. You sound like a fantastic, caring parent. I really hope you can get your daughter sorted xxxxx

Haven't had any luck with therapy but medication has helped my daughter. An anti depressant and a beta blocker. She is still far from living a normal life and her progress is slow but she is improving.

like a pp said ERP (exposure response prevention) type of cbt works with ocd. May need medication to bring down the anxiety enough to engage with therapy. You don’t want any therapy where they are told to challenge /invesitgate their thoughts instead they need to sit with them, observe them and let them pass without responding to them. Good book we used was break free from ocd dr Fiona challacombe. There is also a good Facebook support group for parents whose kids have ocd in the uk. 💐

If there's ASD in the mix, regular CBT likely won't have the same effect. Mine is ASD, ADD and OCD. Found a private therapist who understood the combination and she's much better now, plus Sertraline. Good luck!

you don’t want any therapy where they are told to challenge /investigate their thoughts instead they need to sit with them, observe them and let them pass without responding to them
This is really interesting and I think is what works for DD too. Learning to recognise it's a feeling that does pass, although she has commented that the waiting for it to pass can be a long time. It's also very tiring to resist the urge because another one comes along almost immediately.
But, after years of this coming and going she does seem to be on a fairly even keel at the moment.
I suspect her ASD has a large component of rejection dysphoria and this is the part that the OCD has seized upon recently but she's self aware enough to realise now if she's feeling very strong but not entirely rational thoughts, they may be being driven by the OCD and this seems enough for the feelings to begin to reduce.
She's also highly aware of contamination and I don't question if she needs to change clothes etc but I do look out for signs of hand washing as a yardstick of how well she's coping. Stress generally does make it flare up.

its the classic don’t think of a polar bear - all you will think about is a polar bear. Takes work and a good psychologist to learn how to do it. Our massive breakthrough was realising that the thoughts don’t mean anything on their own. We attach meaning to them which makes them repeat. So tough for them but it is possible to recover 💐

My Dd (18) has finally been discharged by her psychiatrist last week. She was diagnosed with OCD 4 years ago - at its worst her bed time rituals were taking 3.5 +hours. It’s such a debilitating and stressful condition for all involved.

She was prescribed Sertraline to reduce her anxiety and has then had CBT which worked really well. Her psychiatrist explained at the start that the medication was necessary to get the anxiety level down sufficiently that she could actually engage with the CBT.

I think the biggest factor in her case was that she came to me asking for help and really really wanted to not have to engage in the rituals. Good luck to you both OP.

I just wanted to say that my heart goes out to you and to all the OCD sufferers and their parents.

My DD was diagnosed with OCD and ASD at 15. She had been having major problems for about 6 months before that (and had actually been having problems for even longer, but had been covering it up).

She has been on 60mg Fluoxetine for just over a year now, and has been having ERP CBT therapy with a clinical psychologist for about 15 months. She has also gone on the pill and runs the packets together so as to miss periods (it's really helpful to her not to have to deal with heavy periods and hormonal changes, plus I think she was getting iron deficient as well).

All of these things have helped her a lot. She has really improved massively from a point of being basically unable to function or go to school. She is back in school full time and taking part in extracurricular activities. She was able to do all her exams last summer. She is not out of the woods yet, and I suspect she will always need some upkeep with therapy and medication. But she really is very, very much better.

Wishing all the very best to everyone.

Yes, my DD is taking the pill to stop her periods, and it’s definitely helping her. Certainly something to consider for those with girls. To all those dealing with OCD.

Me too..11 year old dd

I feel for you all so much. OCD is truly awful. Someone very close to me, slightly older than your teens when I first became aware they were suffering had been having problems from quite a young age. Their issue wasn’t anything immediately obvious to us such as fear of germs or the need for repeated handwashing, it turned out it was hearing one particular word commonly used every day in all sorts of situations that prompted obsessive thoughts that could only be neutralised by carrying out a series of rituals. As time went on longer and more complicated rituals were needed to neutralise the thoughts the word caused. Virtually the whole day was taken up doing them and by the time their GP became involved lack of sleep was a major issue too.
The GP went above and beyond at the first appointment, initially referring them for an emergency mental health assessment as they had alluded to suicidal thoughts, then seeing them again in the evening and daily for the first week. He even put arrangements in place for the days he was off and added a marker on their records making clear that if an appointment was requested it should be given. Sleeping tablets were prescribed for a couple of nights followed by a prescription for Sertraline and once the medication was found to be helping he recommended several books that would be useful to read whilst waiting for CBT
By the time the appointment came through they were better able to cope, but CBT was extremely tough because it involved them having to say and write the word, and keep a daily diary of how it made them feel both when they did, and each time they heard the word spoken by others. Up until then we had all done our best to avoid using the word in any of its forms while they were present but we were advised that this was doing them no favours. When the course of CBT finished they began attending a local group for OCD suffers and found that talking openly to others with the condition was really helpful
I appreciate that none of this will be of any great use to you with young teens but it may help you to know that with the right treatment there is light at the end of tunnel . Occasionally we notice a slight reaction if the word comes up in conversation but CBT provided them with the tools to cope and the need for any ritualistic actions has gone.
As a parent I can only imagine how awful and worrying it must be to watch your child suffering in this way, and all the more so because help and treatment is so hard to find. I literally had no idea how debilitating, isolating and frightening OCD is and nowadays my hackles rise when people try to minimise it. It’s criminal that so little help is available.

DD16 has the intrusive thoughts type of OCD and is ASD, fluoxetine/Prozac has helped a bit but CBT didn't really. She's currently trying EMDR, but it's too early to tell yet if it's going to work.

My utmost sympathy, we're in a similar situation, DD is not in school, not going out, depressed and struggling to find the energy and motivation - it's heartbreaking to see your child so miserable. I hope you can find something that works for her.

Drugs. Get her medication.

I have OCD and I've tried CBT twice but not found it useful. I've had counselling a number of times and that's offered enough relief to get through a crisis. I don't know if it helps, but my OCD controlled me for years by saying that if I told anyone what was going on in my head that I'd make that thing happen. It was very difficult, but after a few weeks with the counsellor she was able to get me to say some of what I was performing the rituals about.

It's a chronic illness. Part of having it is accepting that it can periodically become acute, and being able to recognise when you're becoming ill/having others recognising you're going off the rails. It's absolutely linked to anxiety, particularly huge events. I had massive 'attacks' after my first child was born, during the death of my brother, etc.

I don't know if your daughter has told you the contents of her intrusive thoughts. I've spoken to other people with OCD and they've been similar to me - that the things we think about are so horrific you can't say them to people you love and it locks you in your own head even more. For instance, I got obsessed that someone was going to cut my husbands arms off with a machete, that'd someone would break in and put my newborn daughter in the washing machine, if I took her out someone would bite her face off.

I'm so sorry your DD has this. It's a vicious and very clever mental illness.

Therapy and pills work for OCD. You must do what the therapist tells you - that’s how you get better.

The other thing I’d say is that parents shouldn’t enable this revolting disease by responding to DC’s overreactions too much or get emotional themselves. That’s annoying & impossible advice but it’s essential. Don’t get too involved. You’re her mother, she’s nearly adult, calm down and detach.

No answers here, but I wanted to say thank you for helping him.
I suffer from severe OCD and have done since the age of 11. My parents didn't believe in mental health and basically took the piss out of me. It's now 30 years later and I still have OCD along with severe health anxiety and general anxiety.
I'm on medication which helps to a degree, but I've been waiting for years for CBT on the NHS.
I do wonder if my life would be different now if I'd had help 30 years ago.
My 8 year old is just like me personality wise and already panics about germs and has a phobia of sick.

I have a lot of life experience of a relative suffering terribly with OCD. Going back to (their) young adulthood. Severe OCD often requires a spell in hospital - there is a specialist inpatient OCD unit in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee I believe (NHS) My relative was not there but was a mental health in-patient for long spells at least twice in their life. Years ago, extreme exposure therapy to contamination fears was the done thing. Think deliberately touching dirty things found in the street and then putting hands in your mouth (under the direction of a psychologist) and other really shocking forms of exposure. Things even a healthy person would be really uncomfortable with. Years later after a relapse, my family member recounted this to the mental health team at the time and they were aghast. However, it actually did work better than anything ever did again, and my family member went from completely non-functional to being able to cope extremely well despite still having OCD all their life -but it didn't stop them living and enjoying lots of things in life/ having a family/ getting a good job. Modern exposure is less extreme. I think that exposure therapy, plus CBT with someone who actually has proper experience of OCD, is key. Plus medicine prescribed. You need to really fight for help from doctors until there is a proper plan in place. Support can be very wishy washy until you really insist upon it. There are NICE guidlines on how it should be treated - look this up and quote it if necessary. The World Health Organisation had listed OCD as one of the top 10 illnesses, including physical and mental, which impacts on the quality of life. It cannot be underestimated. The suffering is immense. The book 'Overcoming OCD' will give you a lot of good information if you feel you need more information on OCD and treatments.

You can overcome it. Honestly, if I overcame mine, you can do the same. It was brutal but you have to make a decision to be brave one day and tolerate the thought without doing the ritual. You will see that nothing bad happens. This is basically ERP as you will know. Start with maybe 5 minutes or even less and then build up. By the time you get to 20 mins you will have got distracted by something else and it won’t be worth doing the ritual anymore.

I honestly thought I would be stuck in my OCD for the rest of my life, and I was a kid when it started so I thought I was crazy because it hadn’t yet been diagnosed. I read the book ‘Overcoming OCD’ by Professor Veale and decided to just take the plunge and it basically cured me in one weekend.

I know how the ocd brain works and I know you’re sitting there thinking ‘not me, mine is different’ but it isn’t, it’s the same viscous cycle in the brain. You can do this, I absolutely promise you, but you have to let the thought go and let go of the ritual. As you have said, you don’t want your son ending up with the same problem. I know you can do this.
much love xxx

@FionaSkates I'm glad you have overcome this terrible illness and your advice comes from a good place. What I would say though is that it isn't just a case of willpower and effort for lots of people. Not giving into complusions for a few days won't work and following the book won't work when OCD is deeply ingrained/ someone's mental health is very fragile. I only say this as it as sometimes people tell sufferers they should 'just stop'. It isn't as simple as that and can be come deeply ingrained and very hard to treat without a lot of professional input.

Totally valid. And I know what it’s like when it is totally engrained. Believe me I did things when I had my OCD (nothing bad/unlawful- just not really understandable/logical) that will be kept between about three people on this earth until we die. If you read my post I wasn’t saying to ‘just stop’ which doesn’t work as you say. But a gradual ERP approach does. But I can see you had relatives with long stays in hospital and that’s also totally valid. I have spent my own time in hospital so I get it. I hope @drivingmeoffmybroom was able to take something, if only a little bit of hope from my post. X

Agreed. I've had OCD for all of my life that I can remember, and CBT with a clinical phsychologist quite literally saved my life. I'll always struggle with the symptoms as it doesn't go away entirely but it's extremely manageable and I am incredibly high functioning now that I have the right tools in my toolbox to manage my symptoms. Cannot recommend enough. Wishing you and your daughter the absolute best. I wouldn't wish OCD on anyone and I'm sorry that you're both going through this.

I'd love to chat with parents for some support. My 18 year old dd is really struggling at the moment with OCD and i am at a loss as to how to help.

Sorry for my late reply, we’ve had a really rough few days. I can’t see an end to this at the moment, but your posts have really helped me and I’m looking at the information / reading that has been recommended.
I’m so sorry to hear so many of you struggling with your own or your loved ones symptoms, it really is so hard for others to understand and I think that’s one of the hardest things about it. It helps to have a safe space to talk with people who understand x

Hi op, I understand how you feel. My dd rejected all offers of counselling etc because she thought medication would be a quick fix. Now she has a prescription but she is too anxious about side effects to take it.
We had a terrible day/night Tuesday but yesterday was a bit better.
Do you have some support in real life?