Re: Obsession or tick

[Guest guest]

OH boy, does this raise lots of questions for me <g>

>   OCD

> worries are repetitive, cause anxiety and upset, and become

> stronger/more

> frequent with repeated reassurance/explanations.  Non-OCD concerns are

> not

> repeating (may come up a few times but not 20X/day for months), and are

> reduced/solved with reassurance and explanations.

One problem we've had is that we labeled my son's " concerns " as more of

a " looping " than obsessions because of this. He would have some

bizarre thoughts, but they didn't appear time consuming and they were

easily resolved. For example, he would have a prolonged discussion

about where we were going to bury him when he died for about 20-30

minutes, but then this would never come up again. Or, he had a huge

fit about his sister's germs getting on his food, but then an hour

later he would be sharing a straw and we would not hear anything about

germs for several weeks.

Now, however, we are finding out that he always has low level anxieties

about dying and germs in the back of his mind. Most of the time he is

able to dismiss them or tell them to go away, but sometimes they

overwhelm him to the extent that we hear about them. Also,

unfortunately he developed some mental rituals to deal with them. We

are encouraging him to continue dismissing the thoughts when he can,

but to openly confront them with us when he can't.

One thing that is really hard is that, to some extent, it seems like

his technique for telling the " brain tricks " to leave him alone has

developed into a bit of a ritual.... Is this healthy or not?

> " Hey, that's an OCD

> question... " .  Many of us have set up reward charts etc. for bossing

> back

> saying the OCD worry or asking an OCD question, less and less often

> until

> the compulsion is extinguished which can work well.

>

>

We've been saying, " That sounds like an obsession. What can we do

about it. " A lot of the times, that is enough to clue him in, and

he'll face the problem pretty well. (Go into the bathroom or whatever).

Sometimes, though, he agrees that it is probably an obsession, but he

still can't face it. Then we try to find a way to weaken it. For

example, he is terrified at being in the " girl's " department of any

store. He is positive that someone will see him and he'll be

embarassed. He realizes that this is ridiculous, but he still can't

stand it. Even after agreeing that it was an obsession, he still was

insisting that he had to walk all the way around the store to avoid

stepping into a girl's section. Finally, he agreed that he thought he

could handle running through the girl's section if he was very fast.

And he did it.

I feel like this is a way of facing the obsession and weakening it. Is

this a good idea?

Finally, and the title of the message is what really hit me. He does

have some compulsive tics. (Licking and kissing for example). This is

the part that drives me crazy. If it is a tic, we do work on modifying

to an extent. (He'll lick or kiss certain people, for example, instead

of classmates or strangers), but we don't try to stop it. But...if it

is a compulsion-then we would try to delay and eventually stop the

behavior. How do you know?

Jeanne

jwestpha@...

NBCT - Exceptional Needs (2000)