Daughter with anxiety and possible ocd

[everydayiwritethebook]

Our adult daughter is back living at home since graduating last summer. She works full time.

She has had symptoms of anxiety since her teens, but she refuses point blank to see a doctor. She gets hysterical about some things, particularly around tidiness, cleaning and any odours in the house. She mentioned that her house mates at uni thought she was a bit obsessive with cleaning. But now it's becoming intolerable at home. I think our house is clean and tidy. Could be better, but the bathrooms are wiped down every day, the kitchen is clean and tidy, floors mopped at least twice a week, vacuumed regularly. According to our daughter the house and everything in it is filthy. It smells bad everywhere according to her (she constantly uses air freshener), and we are disgusting for living like this. It's caused so many rows. I have anxiety and depression myself, and I've been back to the doctors because it's got so bad. I've been so worried that I've asked friends to tell me honestly if they think our house is dirty, and they genuinely don't know what I mean - they say the house is fine.

Our daughter will go on frantic cleaning sprees, scrubbing tiles, walls, floors and disinfecting the bathrooms. She is visibly angry and stressed when she does this. She will tidy things away when you're still using them. She's also thrown things out (paperwork) that she considers to be rubbish.

It's got to the point that living with her like this is intolerable. But she says we're disgusting for living in a "fucking shithole". I'm worried about her, as I can't force her to see a doctor, she's 23, an adult. I also don't want her to feel unwelcome in her home. I really don't know what to do. It's like she sees dirt where it isn't there. I've upped my cleaning schedule in an attempt to make it acceptable in her eyes, but it never is.

Chucking out my paperwork would be the end for me

Ban air fresheners and ban her from cleaning or talking about cleaning
It's your house and your rules
This may provoke her to get help or get her own place

@nitsandwormsdodger I honestly think it would be physically impossible to stop her!

You mentioned it's worse before her period. Could it be PMDD? Here's a link.

www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/premenstrual-dysphoric-disorder-pmdd/about-pmdd/

@Tootiredforallthis I don't know - it's not only before her period. It could be a factor though.

I am sorry to hear about your daughter. We have a lot of OCD in our family to the point we have been diagnosed as having hereditary OCD. So I have a lot of thoughts on it but please be aware I am not a medical professional.
My son developed severe OCD at about 8 and we took him to a therapist. She basically said (in a nice way) my mum (who also has OCD) had not been taught by her parents on how to deal with stress and anxiety and therefore did not have this skill in her tool kit to teach me and therefore I had not taught the children. She helped him learn how to deal with things and his OCD eventually disappeared although it sometimes comes back with minor things.
My daughter developed severe OCD on the onset of puberty. Because she was now a teen it has been such a struggle to deal with but the big thing for me and I recommend this for you if you can afford it - is for you to get therapy on how to deal with your daughter. I periodically see a family therapist and I say to her - what should I do when my daughter does X - and the therapist helps me work out considered strategies.
One thing I really think will help both you and your daughter is to sit down and work out how to deal with low levels of stress in your day. The problem in my family is that we just ignored lower levels of stress and then everything builds up. I mean sit down and say to yourself - what does stress at a factor of 2 (with 10 being the highest) look and feel like to me so I can recognise the signs? ie do you breathe faster, do you talk faster - and when you have recognised the signs you need to come up with stress release mechanisms then. Try this excerise for every level of the scale of increasing stress ie level 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.
Also, I must admit when I am at level 8 I start yelling. But its been suggested to me to try something similar but not negative - like singing. I encourage my daughter when she is getting stressed to start dancing as she finds movement helpful. If she won't dance I start dancing myself to break the rising tension and she usually laughs at me at joins in.
I have had years of OCD therapy and I am now at a point where I like to think of it in a way that my brain works differently to others. There are things I like about my OCD like my attention to detail - I just try and manage the behaviours that are not helpful.
One of the first but hardest steps with OCD is practising identifying what is OCD behaviours so you can then decide how to manage them. We are taught to trust our instincts in life but our our bodies let us down with the urge to become obsessed with something/s. However, if she can practise identifying what is obbessive behaviours than it helps in terms of developing confidence again in our own instincts.
One opinion about OCD that I think is not talked about or researched enough is it is common for people with OCD to have spikey brain profiles. That is when someone's brain has not developed fully in some parts. Like I was put into a gifted and talented high school programme to do 5 years of high school in 3 based on my ability with English - but I can't do maths to save my life. I also have some issues with working memory and I can't learn languages.
I have come across the idea that people with spikey brain profiles often have infant or primative reflexes that have not gone dormant. A baby needs to have completedly some physically moves for long enough to trigger their reflexes to go dormant and if they have not done this - parts of their brain do not fully develop. It's not obvious initially and maybe to the outside world its never obvious - but it does lead to anxiety and other mental health issues.
For example, I would bet if you shut of the lights and darkened a room and gentle shown a torch in either your or your daughter's eyes your pupils will stay enlarged. A normal response would be for a pupil to shrink with the light. But in people who have anxiety its sometimes because their flight or fight response is on 24hrs a day and they have adrenaline running through their body. That's why their pupils do not shrink. It makes sense that if you constantly have your senses on high alert you are anxious. That's why your daughter can smell everything because smell is a sense she has switched on to check for danger. I wouldn't be surprised if you tell me she has skin sensitivities too like when she was a small child had issues with the feeling of labels on her clothes, or the seams of her socks.
OCD is based on fear and people who are constantly in a fight or flight mode live in fear for their safety.
There are many ways to get infant or primative reflexes dormant and with my son I used a brushing technique. The therapist did the pupil test I wrote about earlier. Over the months we would repeat the pupil test and eventually my son's pupil's now retract when light is shown into them.
I hope this helps. I really think you should speak to your doctor - you need just as much support with this as your daughter does.

@ittakes2 thank you for your post. I didn't know it could be hereditary, that's interesting, as my late mother had some similar (though not as extreme) behaviours. I will certainly look in to counselling.