Contamination

May 14, 2002

wow. as for the eyeglasses my son, jake who is 10 does the same thing, he uses

his facial muscles,my whole family is trying to figure out what is ocd and what

is not, there were times that i had to beg my son to get a bath, and then when

he finally did, he took or wanted to take 4 or 5 a day, now we are down to 2

showers a day which i think is great, hang in there

rondy from ill

Contamination

My son doesn't have any contamination obsessions -- just the

opposite, in fact (we have to remind him to wash and bathe). His

compulsions are mostly mental, some touching,

and of the " evening up " variety. But every now and then I see just

an inkling of a contamination obsession and I try to nip it in the

bud.

One day, while he was doing some homework, my son came up with a good

answer and I licked my finger, touched his sleeve, and made a

sizzling sound (as if to say, " you're hot! " ). My son pulled away

from me with a look of horror on his face and said, " I hope you

really didn't lick you finger just now! " I knew this was a " therapy

moment " (other families have " Kodak moments " -- OCD families have

therapy moments). So I said, " Of course I did, " and I did it again.

Then I told him to lick his finger and touch my arm, which he did,

and we did that over and over until his anxiety passed away and both

of us got bored.

Something similar happened in a restaurant when the waiter forgot to

give my son a knife, so I offered him mine, but it had a tiny bit of

my food on it so he didn't want it. I said, " Therapy moment -- use

it " and he did, reluctantly.

Since my son was diagnosed with OCD, our whole family has been trying

to model non-OCD behavior whenever we think of it. We eat food that

has been dropped on the floor, leave things off-kilter and

uncorrected, give loads of cast-offs to charity, etc. And we try

very hard not to " enable. "

Here's what I'm wondering, though. My son had had a compulsion

lately to " even up " his eyeglasses, but he doesn't use his hands to

straighten them, he uses his facial muscles. This results in all

kinds of strange-looking facial contortions and distracts him

terribly (we all know OCD isn't pretty). I tried doing therapy at

home, and finally ended up buying him contact lenses and the problem

is solved. But is this enbling? Socially, I think I did him a big

favor, but I don't like to think that I let OCD win this round.

May 17, 2002

Hi there, I just wanted to say that you seem to be doing wonderfully with the

" therapy " moments that pop up--it took me a very long time to get good at this.

I seemed to only recognize them in hindsight for a long while. My daughter also

has only vague contamination-type concerns and since OCDers seem almost prewired

for this type of obsession/compulsion, I do all I can to nip these in the bud

too. We do our kids an immense favor when the whole family can adopt a CBT/ERP

mindset and model non-OCD behavior. :-)

Regarding getting contacts, I bet your son still wears his glasses on occasion.

He could still do exposures with the glasses when he does wear them, or with

sunglasses, which would limit OCD's " win " on this issue.

Take care,

Kathy R. in Indiana