“Wes had an incident today in Art class.” My heart instantly dropped and my chest tightened as I listened to the principal explain why Wes was in her office. I held my breath as I waited for the worst. Did he throw chairs? Rip something apart? Flashbacks of earlier years still occupy a ridiculously too readily available place in my mind, even after an official diagnosis and almost 2 years of exposure therapy and modern medicine.
I hate it. He’s been doing SO well.
I had noticed the last couple of weeks had been difficult for him. He seemed more agitated. It was harder and harder to get him to leave one task to move to another. He was making inappropriate jokes constantly and couldn’t seem to stop. He seemed more hyperactive and his sleep started to suffer. The night before the incident in art he stared at me with as much energy as a pro athlete ready for game time and said he couldn’t go to bed. He crawled into our bed at 2AM, wide awake. I tried multiple sleep stories and calming sounds to coax him back to sleep. Finally, I heard his breathing stabilize and his body relented to MUCH needed rest.
The awful night led to an even more awful next day. He had jetted into the class straight out of the gate and couldn’t calm down. He was digging holes into his journal, re-sharpening the same pencils and struggling to focus on the task at hand. OCD was staging a counter-attack right under our noses.
In Art, Wes raised the S.O.S. signal in the only way he knew how: Losing control. The whole class was working on a picture for an art fair. When Wes explained the project his eyes bugged out as he exclaimed, “It’s a BIG DEAL.” That day, they were adding a tree to the picture and Wes shared he was struggling to attach it when the teacher announced they had only three minutes to complete it. He was panicking inside and trying to work through it by being silly. One thing led to another and story went that he was running around with scissors in his hand and ended up in time out make inappropriate noises and making inappropriate gestures. UGH.
I wish this was as little of a deal as what it would be for other kids. It’s not for us. Wes has Just Right OCD and these small signals tell us only a fraction of what’s really going on inside his brain. OCD is invisible. And, one of the manifestations for Wes is extreme anxiety when something is left incomplete – an assignment, a project, a piece of art. It’s a life or death situation for him. Imagine if you didn’t put a tree on your page feeling like you’d receive a prison sentence for example. He is unable to process leaving things incomplete in the same way a normal kid can. To help him, we’ve done several exposure therapies over the last year where he leaves things incomplete and has to just stare at it repeatedly so he can get use to the terrible looming feeling he experiences. He has to learn to desensitize himself to it. And, that sucks.
One of Wes’ default coping mechanisms when he is feeling anxious is what I’d call ‘extreme’ humor. He’s 7 so it’s boy humor on steroids – filled with potty words and fart noises. When you add the ‘extreme’ part to it, these behaviors are also I think easy to see on the outside and conclude there must be some bad parenting and exposure to inappropriate things at home. It’s the kind of thing you see and you might think, “That kid needs more discipline.” I wish to God that was the case. That would be easy. Instead, Wes came home from school defeated. Without a single mention of the call, he admitted to his Dad that, “OCD won today.”
We’re desperate to stay one step ahead of this OCD devil. We hadn’t been to Wes’ psychologist in a few weeks so we immediately scheduled an emergency visit. She did what only a psychologist specializing in OCD can and surfaced the challenges he was having. He calmly shared with her that he’s struggling all day with leaving assignments incomplete. And at night to top it off he’s seeing intrusive scary images he is unwilling to talk about or share any details of. OCD is after him both day and night. I guess I’d be pretty agitated too.
I feel way better. That’s what he said to me after going to Dr. Jennie. It gives credence to his struggles. He feels understood – not bad, not less-than. He needs the help. And, she gives him confidence he can do hard things. I’m so grateful to have a team to work with. It doesn’t just take a village…it takes a group of superstars who are bringing the best to the table to help our son.
We can do hard things. Through the ups and the downs. The steps forward and the stumbles backwards. We just have to keep looking forward.
Peace and victory,
JM
Defeating the OCD Flea 