A question concerning my ocd son

[BeccaLynn]

I have a question to ask for those of you who have struggled since childhood with ocd-type thoughts. Although I wasn't officially diagnosed with ocd until my early 30's, I began struggling with intrusive thoughts at the age of 13. They bombarded my mind, yet I was still able to do my schoolwork and function. I didn't even tell my mom until I was about 21, when she then told me she wished I'd never gone through anything like she had. She had them too and I didn't even know it. My son, who is now 13, has told me during a meltdown at the age of 8 (I think) that he has curse words come to his mind and can't control them. Recently, I found out that he's had them since he was in 1st grade. I have tried to homeschool him to help alleviate academic and social pressure, which makes the thoughts spiral too, but he is still overwhelmed at the amount of work he has to do, even though I've cut down drastically on what most kids his age do and he is terribly behind his peers academically.

My question is, how did you function during school with the type of thoughts you have stuggled with? Did it overwhelm you to try and keep up while battling the thoughts at the same time? I could sure use some insight here.

Thank you so much,
Rebecca

 

[OCD=Owie]

I was homeschooled growing up as well, and I was fourteen when OCD really became severe for me. If I remember correctly, school didn't get really hard for me until about a year later.

Now, growing up I was used to finishing school a lot faster than my friends in public school. I could start at 11:00AM and be done with everything at 2:00PM while my friends would be in school from 9 - 3. I was able to just pick up my english book, read the amount of pages necessary, then pick up the next one and repeat. It wasn't fun, but it was pretty quick.

At about the age of 15, my curriculum changed, but so did my ability to focus on my schoolwork and get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Laziness might have played a role in this as well, I'm not sure. The new curriculum gave me flexibility to do what subjects I wanted to do when I wanted to. I just had to finish all my subjects by the end of the year, obviously. This sense of "I can do that later" might have contributed to my problem, but I think the biggest contributor was my rapidly growing OCD.

I got to the point where I couldn't focus on the work in front of me, as my mind would either wander to my obsessions, or I would be reading so slowly that I would get discouraged and let my mind wander about other things. I'm not entirely sure why things became so hard for me to read. It makes me think it was OCD related just because of how drastic it was. I only had to read four pages of a science book every day, but that was a struggle for me. I felt like if I went too fast, I wasn't understanding what I was reading. I had this sense that if I wasn't understanding what I was reading, I was being lazy and was being dishonest in a sense.

I had to do school through the summer for 3 years straight because of my problems. The first year I would sneak away to play video games and stuff (partially out of hopes that it would distract me from my obsessions, and partially because I wanted to play video games) but the second and third years, I literally did very little other than sit down and try to finish my schoolwork. People would talk about how they never saw me and stuff. I barely played video games anymore, simply because I always had schoolwork I needed to do.

Towards the end of high school, me and my mom (who had OCD when she was younger) began to realize that I had OCD, and were more understanding of it. Unfortunately, even this understanding didn't solve the fact that it took me forever to finish my schoolwork.

Quite frankly, I never got through it while I was in high school. It wasn't until I went to college that I started to get through it.

You see, for me anyway, I'm very thorough, and I would try to do the best I could on an assignment regardless of the amount of time it took. Being a homeschooler, I didn't have hard deadlines and would spend as much time as I felt necessary on the task at hand. This would lead me to spending way too much time on my tasks.

So when I started college, I now had deadlines. No longer was I able to prolong an activity indefinitely. Even better for me though, was the fact that it was encouraged that you just "get it done" if the deadline is approaching. It wasn't considered lazy or wrong to speed up your work in order to make sure you met the deadline. This helped me tremendously, and I did quite well when I got to college.

Of course, my OCD, while better at this point since I had started to find ways of combating it, was still an issue. It wasn't until I started taking medication that my OCD became manageable.

Hopefully my answer wasn't way longer than it needed to be. Lol. Let me know if you have any specific questions. Hope this helps.

 

[BeccaLynn]

Thank you so much for your response. My son began turning in incomplete papers in the second grade. I believe his teacher even had the principle talk to him, but he just couldn't seem to focus and was always concerned that he didn't or wouldn't understand things. He was spent by the end of the school day, and homework was out of the question. He even had meltdowns from as far back as preschool years over going to class and the social aspect of it. In elementary school, I even called my mom to help me carry him to the car to take him to school over the anxiety of going. He and I thought homeschool would help him and, at first, it relieved some of his anxiety. It didn't take long though before he realized that this was still school and continued to melt down over the work I was expecting of him. He is terribly below grade level and I have tried and tried to figure out how to help him. Pushing him doesn't help.

My husband nor I want to have to put him on medicine, especially at such a young age. I tried a nutritionist who told me he was sensitive to wheat and dairy and it affected his moods. I stopped taking him because I just couldn't afford it anymore, especially on one income. Some people in my family didn't believe that those foods bothered him either and were still giving him those things. I've tried to fix healthy meals that don't contain those things also. I had very bad personal experiences with meds and it scares me. It's like all he can focus on are things that he enjoys, like making fishing kits and traps and such. He gets completely drawn into those things, but books and anything that he feels uncomfortable with just send him over the top. I've tried hands-on lessons, but he doesn't have any interest in trying or learning and just wants it over with. Even in co-op, when he felt he didn't know something or was do to have a test, he emotionally just melted down and would lash out in a fit of anxiety. I feel like I'm often times banging my head against a wall. He gets very nervous over social situations too and limits himself greatly. He never enjoyed Sunday School and came to the point to where he would just hold onto me and refuse to let go. He wouldn't even go to VBS. He sticks with his dad or me or someone else he knows and feels comfortable with and trying to make him do otherwise is just looking for a meltdown. I've thought about putting him back into school where he has someone else to be accountable to, but I can't imagine that it would be any better now if I had a terrible time even trying to get him there in second grade when he wasn't so far behind and I could physically carry him. At this point, he has so much anger too and often times has to go off and do something relaxing to cool down, which he couldn't do in public school.

I want to be sympathetic and let him know that we're a team, yet hold him accountable for what he can do. That's often difficult for me to tell. He doesn't melt down over work like mowing or something outside, but picking up after himself or keeping anything even somewhat organized is like impossible for him. I think it reflects how he feels inside - out of order.

Anyone having advice or understands and is willing to respond would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you again.

 

[OCD=Owie]

From what you're saying, it sounds pretty severe. Since you're hesitant to try medication, you might want to try therapy instead.

Now, you say that he falls behind because he's afraid he doesn't understand it? Essentially, his OCD is making him over-thorough? If that's the case, I know that what helped me get through that was having deadlines. Either I turned in an imperfect paper/project, or I didn't get to turn in anything at all (which is less perfect than imperfect!) It helped me in college, so maybe it would help him. Just something to think about.

Also, apart from therapy and medications, there are some people who are able to control their OCD through other means. Exercise can help. I used to run almost every day, which helped me. Some people change their diets to be more healthy, and some even go out of their way to get a certain kind of fish oil in their system, I believe. I can't give much detailed info on how diet might help simply because I haven't done much research or had much personal experience with that method.

There are also natural supplements that people take to try and treat OCD. From what I remember, natural supplements aren't clinically proven to help OCD simply because there hasn't been much research focused on it. However, some people report success with it, so that might be a good thing to look into.

Another thing that helped me was educating myself about OCD. I originally didn't know what OCD was, let alone that I had it. So I just thought I was some weird, lazy person. When I learned about OCD and began to understand how it worked in my own life, I started to figure out how to combat compulsive tendencies. It really is a very important part of recovery.

The three things that helped me the most out of all the things tried while trying to treat my OCD were: Social interaction (not sure how helpful this would be to your son), Education on OCD, and medication. However, everyone's different with regards to what they respond to, so you might have to try different things before you find what actually helps.

 

[BeccaLynn]

Thank you for answering me. My son became very angry when my husband and I made him go for counseling once. I think that my husband and I are just going to just have to be together on this though and take him anyway. Hopefully we can begin taking him again to the nutritionist I spoke of earlier, I just hate that it has to be so expensive! That's so stressful in itself in trying to come up with the funds to do that. However, the nutritionist has been able to tell us what will work for him and what won't.


Thanks again!

 

[raven1]

I started cursing as a result of OCD at age eight. I had a horrible time keeping up with school but my parents put me on meds and it helped alot.

 

[BeccaLynn]

Thanks Raven. May I ask what meds they put you on?

 

[raven1]

Um I do not remember what they put me on at age 8. Now a days they might choose Prozac or Paxil.

 

[jjust19]

I suffer from intrusive thoughts myself. I know the feeling of thinking violent, sexual, and blasphemous thoughts without consent. I've discovered a few ways to control it though. One way would be to control your breathing, along with listening to music while imagining something mildly difficult (i.e. a ring spinning). Other ways include rebuking Satan and all that is not of the blessed Holy Spirit, God, and Jesus. The best thing to remember is that the thoughts aren't yours. You won't be judged for them unless you dwell on them.