How To Stop OCD Taking Away Your Teen's Future

How Do You Stop OCD Taking Away Your Teen's Future?

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can cast a dark shadow over a child's life and affect their school performance, home life, relationships and self-esteem.

This can cause parents to worry not only about managing their child's daily symptoms and challenges but also about how OCD may limit their child’s ability to achieve their goals and create barriers to success.

However, with the right interventions, understanding, and support, it’s possible to help children take control of OCD and create a brighter, more promising future.

Here are 3 steps to help your teen reclaim their life from OCD.

Step 1: Seek Professional Help

The minute you suspect your child is developing OCD, it's essential to get an official diagnosis from a GP or a healthcare professional. They will then likely refer you to someone specialising in children's mental health for further investigation and treatment.

Sadly, there is often a long waiting list for professional help.

In the meantime, here are a few ways you can begin addressing OCD in the meantime.

• Consider private therapy: While this can be costly (it can cost anything from ￡60- ￡100+ an hour here in the UK), private therapy can offer quicker access to support. If you choose this option, be sure to choose a therapist who specialises in childhood OCD as treatment for OCD differs significantly from that for anxiety or other mental health issues.
• Do your research: While waiting for professional therapy, you can start researching how OCD operates by checking out reputable OCD websites, social media accounts and childhood OCD books.
• Start challenging OCD at home: While waiting for professional therapy, you can begin implementing strategies to challenge OCD behaviours in the meantime like the ones covered in step 2.

2: Create a plan of action

Start by identifying the compulsions that are creating the most distress.

Rank them from 1 to 10, with 1 causing the least disruption and 10 being the most intense.

Next, select one of the lower-ranking compulsions as your starting point. This will become the first challenge to tackle.

Then, decide on an approach to start tackling it.

For example, you may want to start by delaying a compulsion or the frequency of a compulsion.

Reclaiming a teen's life from OCD begins with taking small, consistent steps every day to challenge the disorder.

Step 3: Minimize Resistance

It's common for teens to resist confronting OCD, especially at the beginning of treatment.

To help ease resistance to therapy, offering incentives and means of distraction can make the process more manageable.

These 'sweeteners' can help motivate teens to engage in therapy and start challenging OCD.

Some examples include:

• A trip to the cinema.
• Playing a favourite board game together.
• A fun outing, like a day at the seaside.

Pairing therapy with something enjoyable can help reduce emotional barriers and make the experience less daunting.

Parenting OCD in Teenagers- My Digital Handbook

After helping my teenage daughter manage OCD and lead a more fulfilling life, I am now on a mission to try to help teenagers and parents avoid the struggles we faced.

I want to share what I’ve learnt so far so that others can:

• Spot early?signs of OCD in teens
• Manage OCD using?positive communication?and introducing ERP (exposure response prevention) therapy.
• Get support from schools so your child can still achieve their academic and personal goals.
• Prevent OCD from worsening…and evolving into other themes.
• Protect?relationships and siblings?from the impact of OCD.

One of the ways that I do this is through my Parenting OCD in Teens and Tweens Digital Handbook, which I have uploaded to the Payhip platform so that parents can download it right away and start working through the strategies at their own pace.

What’s included in the Handbook?

The workshop consists of over 100 pages broken up into six easy-to-follow chapters as detailed below:

1. Understanding OCD
2. Managing Anxiety
3. Challenging OCD
4. Overcoming Challenges
5. Getting Support
6. Parenting A Teen Or Tween With OCD- Recap

What’s the cost of the Parenting OCD in Teens and Tweens Digital Handbook?

At the time of writing,?my ‘Parenting OCD in Teens and Tweens Digital Handbook ‘is available for a?one-off cost?of?just ￡15.

What can you expect from the handbook?

What I will say is that for just ￡15, you will get access to?the following:

• What I learnt during?six years?of supporting my teenage daughter with therapy condensed into?ONE?convenient handbook, which you can use to start managing OCD while waiting for professional therapy
• Heaps of examples of different ways to introduce ERP therapy, broken down into quick examples.
• Examples of how to ease a teen’s discomfort as they begin to expose themselves to their greatest fears, that include using distraction and offering ‘sweeteners’
• Strategies shared from a parent’s perception (and language) rather than a professional therapist’s
• Ways to help protect relationships and siblings from OCD
• Tasks to help make challenges easier, including creating your own OCD character
• Examples of ways to manage anxiety and stop other OCD themes from creeping in.

All this for a one-off price of ￡15.

Click here to get access to?the Parenting OCD In Teens and Tweens Digital Handbook?TODAY.