by PJ’s Dad<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember walking into\nthe house, hoping as I had everyday that today would be different than the\nprevious month; that things would go back to the way they were. I imagined my\ndaughter would come to the door and give me a hug, ask me how my day was and we\nwould have a chat. But nothing had\nchanged. My wife spent all day,\ntirelessly cleaning the house, preparing for our daughter to come in and see\nthat the house was clean. When I came\nin, my wife was sitting in the kitchen explaining to my daughter that everything\nwas fine \u2013 the house was clean, her school papers were clean, her brother was\nclean. I came in and thought I was being\ncareful. I took off my shoes, taking\ncare that my socks didn\u2019t touch the doormat. \nI took off all of my outer layers, ensuring I only touched the\ninsides. I made sure I sanitized my\nhands after putting down my briefcase. \nThen, I walked into the kitchen and it all went wrong. My wife told me to stop walking; she yelled\nand pleaded, but I just didn\u2019t understand \u2013 or didn\u2019t want to understand \u2013 and\nI stepped in the one spot on the floor that was not to be touched. A \u2018dirty\u2019 spot that only my wife and daughter\ncould see, a spot that OCD had created, like so many all over our house. I had undone the last bit of calm left in the\nhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was January, and in\nDecember my 8-year-old daughter \u2013 a carefree bundle of energy and movement and\ncuriosity \u2013 woke up one day with OCD. It\ncame out of nowhere for us and we had no idea what we were dealing with. As with most parents, we tried to \u2018help\u2019 by\ncleaning the house, answering our daughter\u2019s need for constant reassurance and\ndoing what she needed to get through the day. \nAt night, we cried and tried to come up with some reason why our\ndaughter was lost. She screamed at us,\nrefused to hug us and slowly confined our every movement. In one vivid and painful night, she looked us\nin our eyes, through tears on both sides and said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to live.\u201d I could not even comprehend what had happened\nto get us to this place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thankfully, I am married to a brilliant woman and a fierce mother who stops at nothing to protect her family. Thankfully, we have a son who is a loving older brother and his sister\u2019s greatest champion. And thankfully, despite so many no\u2019s and \u201cWe can see you in three months,\u201d my wife found help and we began therapy. We finally felt like we were not alone; someone understood what was happening to our daughter and our family. And somewhere deep inside, my daughter knew she had to face her darkest fears. We also had to face our own fears as parents. We had to see that we had unknowingly enabled OCD to grow more powerful. We all had to learn what we were living with and how to battle it. Therapy taught us the tools to begin a healing process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, we live with OCD, but it does not control our lives. Everyday, we rely on the knowledge and tools that the professionals have taught us. Some days, they are merely a safety net and some days they are a lifeline. My daughter is back and stronger than she was before. She knows she can live with OCD and she knows she has a team (family and professionals) who will help her when she thinks she cannot. Just this morning, we were in the car headed to school and she looked at me and said, \u201cDad, my hands feel like they\u2019re covered in plastic.\u201d (That\u2019s how her OCD comes to her.) I was able to say, \u201cOK. What do we do when this happens?\u201d She was able to tell herself she would get through the feeling and redirect her thoughts. By the time we got to school five minutes later, she was smiling and running out of the car to her chorus practice. OCD has not left our lives, but we know how to #FaceOurFears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We also had to face our own fears as parents. We had to see that we had unknowingly enabled OCD to grow more powerful. We all had to learn what we were living with and how to battle it. Therapy taught us the tools to begin a healing process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","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_Blog8.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","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=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}