{"id":157,"date":"2019-09-30T15:51:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T19:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/?p=157"},"modified":"2019-10-09T08:57:28","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T12:57:28","slug":"faceyourfears-a-moms-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/?p=157","title":{"rendered":"#Faceyourfears: A Mom’s View"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by PJ’s Mom<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My 8-year-old Daughter was courageous, active and full of joy.  Then, one day, it all changed.  She went from fearless to afraid, and happy to worried all the time.  It didn\u2019t make sense. My daughter started washing her hands all the time.  Then she stopped touching things.  As the days progressed, she stopped moving freely around the house.  She was closing off her world and creating a cocoon.  As a parent, you want to help your child, and make everything better.  In doing so, I tried to understand what was bothering her so I could help.  My daughter was afraid of \u201cdirt\u201d and \u201cgerms.\u201d  I thought I caused it.  I need to be careful about germs because I have an autoimmune disease and a compromised immune system.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out, my daughter wasn\u2019t afraid of being sick, she was just afraid of feeling dirty.  To try and help, I started cleaning the house incessantly.  She would head out to school and I would spend all day cleaning, thinking \u201cthis time when she gets home from school, she will walk right in the house, see it is clean, and everything will be back to normal.\u201d  Of course, that wasn\u2019t the case.  This thing<\/em> that was bothering her was more powerful than cleaning supplies, and more powerful than Mom and Dad\u2019s love.  I kept trying, though.  I would look around the clean house and think, \u201cHow can this be dirty?\u201d  Our house was spotless, our bodies were clean, I even bleach wiped her homework so she would work on it.  But none of it was good enough. Every time I thought, \u201cthis is it, she will see things aren\u2019t dirty,\u201d there would be a mysterious spot on the floor, or the doorframe, or the shower curtain (I could go on) that was tainted.  I started seeing where she would have an issue.  Of course the floor, the door frame, and the shower curtain were all clean, but I started understanding the \u201crationale\u201d behind what she considered \u201cdirty.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This thing<\/em> that was bothering her was more powerful … than Mom and Dad\u2019s love. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The reality was,\nmy 8-year-old Daughter has OCD.  I tried\nto make it rational, but there is no rationale to OCD.  What had worked to help her calm down one\nday, didn\u2019t work the next.  Our daughter\nasked us hundreds of questions a day- \u201cDid you clean that? Did you wipe that\ndown?  Did anyone touch that?\u201d  It was endless.  And with each day, I saw my happy, fearless\ndaughter was disappearing.  Her older\nbrother looked at us and asked, \u201cWhere did my sister go?\u201d  I was feeling hopeless.  It is terrifying watching your child become so\nanxious, angry and aggressive about something we couldn\u2019t see or understand.  As everything was rapidly spiraling out of\ncontrol, my fears grew.  I was afraid my\nstrong, joyful daughter was gone forever. \nI was afraid of the stigma of having a child with mental health concerns\nand how that might reflect on me as a mother. \nI was afraid of OCD.  Instead of\ncleaning all day, I started searching the internet for answers.  Of course, there are no answers on the\ninternet, but I learned something.  I\nrealized I <\/em>needed to face my fears about\nraising a child with a mental disorder for my\ndaughter to get help we all so desperately needed.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started going to therapy.  We are fortunate; we are a family that supports each other, and a family that believes in seeking help when things aren\u2019t right.  We went to weekly therapy, we listened to the podcasts, we did the workbooks, and my Daughter started taking medicine.  We did everything we could as a family to educate ourselves about OCD.  As time progressed, I finally started feeling a sense of hope.  We had to learn how to help our daughter face her fears.  I realized that every time I cleaned something, methodically took off my shoes and socks, or answered her questions about whether something was clean, I thought I was helping my daughter.  Instead, I was really helping OCD gain more power.  It was hard as a mom.  I had to go against my mom instinct because that kind of help- the cleaning, the doing what she asked, the answering questions- only helped OCD and I became a part of it.  Because I was pulled into the OCD, in the beginning of treatment, I had to take a step back.  My husband and son stepped in and gave her the support.  They helped her do her exposures, even making up crazy dance moves to \u201cbeat up\u201d her OCD.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a few months of therapy, I was talking with my daughter.  She looked at me and said \u201cWhen I overcome my OCD\u2026\u201d  Tears started to well up in my eyes.  To be honest, I did not hear the rest of her sentence.  I was just so proud of my daughter, and so happy that my daughter believed in herself. My daughter is brave, strong, active, and full of joy again.  I am in awe of her daily strength, and her ability to communicate when things don\u2019t feel right.  There are still times when OCD is trying to take over, but my daughter performs the tools she learned in therapy and tackles the anxiety head on.  When she needs it, we are there to help her find the strength she needs to take control.  My daughter is not afraid to face her fears and realizes that she is stronger than OCD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This thing that was bothering her was more powerful than cleaning supplies, and more powerful than Mom and Dad\u2019s love….I realized I needed to face my fears about raising a child with a mental disorder for my daughter to get help we all so desperately needed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anxiety","category-ocd","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/OCD_Blog9.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}