Any experience with OCD intrusive thoughts and severe anxiety please?

[StillMedusa]

And what support is out there!?
DS2 is 19.. has Aspergers, mild learning disability and anxiety.. had a breakdown a couple of years ago, when his OCD traits (mild and liveable til then) morphed into terrible intrusive thoughts. He had some councelling through CAHMS and was put on Sertraline and improved massively.

Til a few weeks ago when the anxiety ramped up again. And the intrusive thoughts...culminating in a massive mother of all meldowns today..he was with Mencap workers at the time who brought him home to me.
The GP saw him today, doubled his sertraline and also put him on Lorazapam to try and at least calm him a little.
As he's over 18 now he has been discharged from CAHMS and will either be picked up by community MH or specialist learning disability psych (preferable)
Meantime we have to cope. He thinks he is a danger to others due to his 'bad thoughts' (he really isn't.. ) and it is horribly distressing to him, Plus he has a patchy understanding.. some ways he is clever, others he is a young child.

HOW can I help him.. how do we help him cope with his thought and reasure him that he won't act out on them. And what do adult servces actually DO? It's tricky as he isn't a 'typical' adult!

I have experienced this. I'm past it all now but I suffered pretty badly. It took a long time for me to recognise that thoughts are just thoughts and I shouldn't shame myself for them. I also had to learn to live with uncertainty. The more you brat yourself up over a thought or try to get it right in your head the worse the anxiety gets. Can you look into getting him a therapist that specialises in anxiety disorders? I never had therapy I used years of self help though.

i was prescribed quetiapine for rumination, I can't recommend it exactly but it does help me sleep, a low dose antipsychotic, other than that crisis team told me to distract myself or talk about the bad thoughts, that's all really, I was offered DBT but politely declined, it is horrible too so do sympathise with your ds2, you are good being so concerned and caring.

My DD had CBT, the difference was remarkable in a space of a few weeks.

I can't offer advice re: adult services.. but I can offer some hope that invasive thoughts can be treated and you can come out the other side.

For me CBT really really helped. Though I could never bring myself to admit the worst of the invasive thoughts - I found that CBT was useful in re-wiring my thought patterns, helping me steer away from the dark-edges.

It's not an easy road (and I don't have any of the surrounding complexities, I was otherwise NT I just had crippling OCD) but it is surmountable.

There was a period in my teens and 20's when it felt like my brain was hardwired to torture itself. I'd think-up the worst possible things I could imagine - and then I'd replay them, obsess over them. And punish myself for being able to think such things, and judge myself for obsessing over them (in some way it felt like I was encouraging or endorsing the thoughts by giving them space to live in my head). If I could turn them off during the day, they'd come to me in my sleep.

CBT helped me take a rational outside view, helped me make positive choices about what thoughts I give head-space to.

Thank you for the replies. He has an emergency appointment with adult MH next week, but I suspect they may and try and palm us off with 'he's autistic so not our remit' when it is the OCD that is the problem.

I am going to take him to a CBT therapist that is recommended locally for some private CBT starting asap..as I'm assuming that even if he gets CBT on the NHS there will be a long wait that he can't afford so meantime we will find a way to finance it somehow.

It is good to hear that CBT can help..I think even with his complex needs he is capable of gaining some strategies.. I hope!