An analogy that has helped my son

[Guest guest]

Just wanted to share something that has helped my 11-yr.old son start

to ignore some of his OCD thoughts- he is a computer whiz, like most

kids these days, so I suggested that he think of his OCD thoughts

as " spam " email that isn't worth going into his brain's inbox- he can

just automatically delete those thoughts and similar thoughts in the

future he can just " mark as spam " so he doesn't waste any time on them.

I said that the OCD might make the titles of those spam emails really

scary to try to get him to open them, but to not be tricked into

opening spam mail. Now when he brings up an OCD worry, we label it

as " spam " .

My son also loves rock music and we've changed the lyrics to some of

his favorite songs into lyrics about OCD- we end up laughing at the

songs we create, and that seems to lessen the power of the OCD over

him.

Meredith