For Sheri

[Guest guest]

Your daughter and your situation sound very parallel to our lives a

couple of years ago. was 14 when she was officially diagnosed,

though I had known for some time that OCD was the culprit. My own

denial was a stage that I had to get through before we could start to

move.

Kathy R has done her usual masterful job of addressing the specifics in

your original post, so I won't try to hit it point by point. However,

we have gone through nearly all the obsessions and compulsions that you

outline. A series of major anxiety attacks after starting high school

(in a kid who'd always been a perfectionist anyway) were the shove that

got us into treatment. We tried to go it without medication at first,

because I couldn't face the idea of putting my daughter on a

brain-altering chemical that she might have to take for the rest of her

life. By the end of the first semester of freshman year, we all agreed

it was time to try SSRIs and we lucked out with the first one, Zoloft.

Once she'd been on the Zoloft for a while, it was possible to address

specific obsessions and compulssions. was very motivated to get

rid of these, which helped enormously. While we didn't do the very

formalized E & RP that many on this list have done, she set about

systematically working on behaviors. She said, " I figure out what I'm

afraid of and then just do it. "

Today she is a high-achieving junior with great grades and a part-time

job, working on the school newspaper and taking an extra-credit

competitive speech class because she was afraid of public speaking. I am

so proud of her I could burst.

It hasn't always been easy and it isn't over by a long shot. Every day

brings new challenges and some things, like skin picking, are perennial

problems. She took her driver's license test three times before she

passed and is still a worrywart.

You are right, by the way, to realize that not every odd or annoying

behavior is OCD. Some of it is simply being a teenager, and teenagers

are required by law to be at least part-time pains in the a**.

Hang in there. It WILL get better.

~Taffy in San Diego