Tag: ocd treatment

“If you hadn’t have told me, I’d never have known.” This is how everyone feels when they meet my sweet, funny, clever son. So of course I find myself feeling silly as I go out of my way to proactively explain something that others largely see as undetectable. Obsessive Compulsive Dissorder is invisible. So, why make a big deal of it at all?

You see my son as a stereotypical boy. He’s full of energy. He wants to wrestle with his Dad. He doesn’t want to go to bed and dawdles to get his things together to get out the door before school. He loves to play on his Nintendo Switch, play with our puppy and run around the neighborhood with his friends.

From the time he turned 2 years old he was ‘hard.’ Shortly after his 2nd birthday I’d taken him solo on a trip to Canada. It was a rude awakening. I didn’t even recognize him. He punched at me on the plane, woke up multiple times each night asking to be taken home. He was inconsolable. His persistence to do nothing of what you were trying to get him to do was herculean. A year later when I put him in preschool for the first time, I received an almost daily incident report of egregious behaviors. One day, he was so triggered that he started throwing chairs and toys. They took pictures of the scene and left it intact so we could witness firsthand the gravity of it. Talk about the walk of shame! They might as well of made us wear a scarlet letter in and out of the building. Not surprisingly, I found a parenting flier selectively placed in his cubby for me to consider; offered by a local church. It was like a punch to the gut. I’d never seen that level of intensity at home.

Over the next couple of years, we continued to struggle with school. By the time he got to kindergarten we’d tried everything, including doing 20 weeks of a parent-child interaction therapy program that helped immensely but simply wasn’t enough. And the school was ill-equipped to effectively manage special needs. One day Wes came home and shared that he often went to a teacher. “But she’s not REALLY a teacher. She teaches kids how to be good.” Another punch in the gut. My son thinks he is a bad person. He kept hearing that message for so long I was terrified he’d actually start believing it.

During a follow-up therapy appointment, I remember asking in tears if Wes could be evaluated for OCD. They didn’t pursue a formal diagnosis and the therapist shared that she felt based on a simple questionnaire or two that he was just a ‘rigid’ child on the ‘bright path’. OCD is rarely diagnosed that young based on what I now understand (and I don’t fault anyone for this).

Adults don’t respond well to ‘rigid’ children. During a meeting with his first preschool teacher she sat with her arms crossed with an expression of utter dismay over finding his overreaction to hearing the toilet flush ridiculous and disruptive. Sensory sensitivity is part of the OCD experience for many people. His was so bad that a loud train horn once triggered a pure, blood-curdling trauma response. We didn’t do fireworks or use the blender. Public restrooms were a minefield. Even my own family wasn’t accepting of his rigidity. My stepdad felt by ruining a police lego station they had made together he’d learn that life isn’t fair. He simply needed to learn he can’t get his way all the time. If only it were that simple!

I know there absolutely could be things you see in my son that concern you or unnerve you. And, I’m confident those things are OCD. I also don’t want you to see those things and come to your own conclusions. I say this because at one point when were just past the diagnoses and just steps away from our first exposure therapy a friend vehemently stammered to me that she saw him PLAYING with a knife. “Jacqui, he was PLAYING WITH IT!!!,” she repeated to me as if I just wasn’t getting it and repeating it would help. She had walked in on him in my kitchen taking a plastic sheath on and off of a large chopping knife. She was so upset when he responded insistently that I let him play with knives (clearly NOT the case) and left the house without saying anything – terrified.

“Let me talk to Wesley about it,” the psychologist said after I shared the situation and asked for guidance. After a series of questions she was able to confirm with absolute certainty there was absolutely zero intention to harm or hurt. He has harm OCD and is terrified of something happening to me. To deal with the fear of dangerous things harming me he exercises compulsions because OCD tricks him into thinking if he does those compulsions nothing bad will happen. As part of his ‘Just Right’ OCD he needs to see things completely (I’m talking like every side of it up, down, sideways etc) so he was exercising a compulsion to see the full blade repeatedly. Two weeks later when we finally learned of the situation we immediately installed a child lock and designed exposure therapy that lasted months to help him work through it.

I don’t want you to jump to your own conclusions. That’s the reason I talk about OCD. And, Wes doesn’t want you to either. I asked him this week if he wanted me to share with the summer school program about OCD and he quickly responded YES absolutely. He feels validated and understood, something everyone deserves. When he gets stuck it’s helpful to have a village of encouraging people ready to empathize and understand instead of judge.

I am so thankful for those people who have made Wesley feel seen and heard – his amazing team at school, us, his psychologist, and our friends who support him every day on his journey to battle the ‘OCD Flea’.

Peace & Victory,

JM