Featured image: At the doctor’s office AGAIN!!
Last week Syd was sick again. Early Monday morning she started with a croup like cough and a moderate fever. In addition to the typical frustration of having one of your kids uncomfortable, I was reeling to figure out why she has been sick so much this year. After all, we went the entire year of 2018 without a fever or illness beyond the occasional sniffle.
I have raved about the immune booster we use, touting how it has kept us all illness free for over a year. What happened? Had my magic mushrooms lost their oomph? It just didn’t make sense, Chris and I haven’t been getting sick. Syd had the flu, but we didn’t. Then she had a stomach bug, again we avoided it. Now, some weird respiratory thing that was striking with a vengeance.
By Wednesday I decided to take her into her PCP just to see if it was strep (as that was going around her pre-school). I kept pondering why she was getting sick. I finally decided I needed to gather a little more information. As we drove to the physicians office I asked her, “Are you washing your hands at school?” Sydney replied, “Yes!”. I followed up with, “Are you using soap?” To which she replied, “Nope!”
Ugh! Here it was, the reason my otherwise healthy kid has been ravaged by illness this year. Now, you may be thinking – silly kid – but there is more to this story. This, is absolutely the result of Chris’s OCD! Or more specifically, his Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) treatment for OCD. And even more specifically, my attempts to help Chris with his ERP sessions and to not reassure or neutralize things for him.
In a nutshell OCD is obsessive thoughts that cause immense fear and anxiety that are countered with compulsive behaviors that lessen the overall anxiety and fear, at least for a while. ERP is exposure to the fear without engaging in the compulsive behavior. Chris’s OCD tends to focus on contamination a lot, though it is more complicated than that, for the purpose of today’s post, we can leave it at that. Because of this focus of his OCD, Chris sees contaminants everywhere and is overly concerned about not only washing his hands, but about how often Syd should wash hers as well.
As part of Chris’s ERP treatment, he has to resist the compulsions – or specifically in this case – wash his hands less or not at all. Over the last few months Chris has made amazing progress, but still seeks reassurance from me often. His OCD wants 100% certainty that contaminant A won’t harm him or more importantly Sydney. Here’s the sticking point and the crux of OCD – 100% certainty doesn’t actually exist. Certainty is an emotion and the non-OCD sufferer can feel 100% certain even though we might only be 95% sure. Our brains (non-OCD) can see the puzzle, realize a piece or two is missing and still get the whole picture. That less than 5% chance that something might not be, isn’t enough for us to eschew certainty. For the OCD sufferer, even a .001% chance of something is too great for there to be certainty.
Over the last few months, Chris has been getting progressively better about resisting his compulsions, but he would ask if we should have Sydney wash her hands. I did my best to neither confirm or deny the presence of a contamination and in the process, told Chris and Syd that she did not have to wash her hands….. I found myself slacking on having her wash her hands before eating and after coming home from school. I would ask her if she washed her hands after going potty, but I wasn’t doing a sniff check to make sure soap was being used.
So here we are, four months into the year and with three, nearly week long illnesses under Sydney’s belt. As soon as she stated she hadn’t been using soap the pieces came together and I immediately understood what had been happening. As soon as we got to the physicians office I brought Sydney into the bathroom and taught her how to properly wash her hands all over again. I explained to her why it was so important to use soap and helped her to make the connection of how her hand rinsing at school had lead to lots of illness.
Since that fateful discovery and hand washing lesson on Wednesday, I can hear Sydney signing “Happy Birthday” as she washes her hands, using that familiar song as an indicator as to how long she should scrub. I can smell the apple soap coming off of her as she enters the living room or the kitchen. I have told everyone this story and each time I laugh and shake my head. Why you may ask?
Well, because this is life with OCD. This is life as a mom. This is life as someone who is still learning. This is life as a budding exposure coach. This. Is. Life. I am grateful for the progress my husband has made, progress made possible by his amazing psychologist and ERP treatment. I am grateful that my daughter has been a part of Chis’s treatment and that she understands the concept behind ERP. One day, she too may develop OCD (there is a 25% chance) and if she does, she will already be armed with the basic concepts of the treatment that will give her her life back.
While we are over here singing “Happy Birthday” with sudsy hands, remember that you can do anything inch by inch.
