If your child repeats the same movements, pay attention! Your child may have OCD. Obsessions are thoughts that scare the child when they come to his mind, and these thoughts come without the child's will. Compulsion is a repetitive movement that the child makes to relieve himself and calm down when an unwanted thought comes to his mind. In society, it can be called obsession, delusion, and anxiety. For example, the child may have a fear of germs and wash his hands many times after touching them. Or our child may be obsessed with order. He may be constantly packing and sorting his belongings. And he may be doing this over and over again. OCD can be seen together with other anxiety disorders, depression, and tic disorder.
OCD is a disorder with a very high incidence rate. The following thoughts usually come to our child's mind: "Something bad will happen." "My mother will die." "My father will die." "I'm infected with a disease." Frightening thoughts come to mind. Sometimes blasphemous thoughts come to your mind, such as cursing God. In this case, the child may think like this: "Oh no, I can't control my thoughts, the thoughts I don't want will come to my mind forever and I will go crazy." He may also reason like this: "I am a bad person since these thoughts I don't want come to my mind, otherwise these thoughts would not come to my mind. ''However, these thoughts can come to anyone's mind. OCD starts at exactly this point, here. The child experiencing OCD attributes a negative meaning to the occurrence of these thoughts in his mind.
Why did my child get OCD?
The cause of OCD is neither you nor the child. It can be seen after a stressful event, but OCD can also come to light without a stressful event. It would be much smarter here to focus on how to get out of this. Because finding the cause does not give us the solution. The cause of OCD is not clear, there may be many factors. For now, I will not go into those factors here because knowing the factors does not help us get rid of OCD. In this article, I try to explain what more needs to be done. The biggest mistake families make is to think that it will pass over time. OCD does not go away over time and even gets worse.
How can my child get rid of OCD? howl?
We teach the child to manage the OCD monster together with the child in the sessions. The first step is to notice the thoughts, then we use the method of keeping distance from these thoughts, and then we intervene in the thoughts and the meaning of the thoughts that come to mind with the Socratic questioning method. What does all this mean? What intervention? I can almost hear you saying, "What distance will the child keep between himself and his thoughts?" These remain abstract, of course, and they seem difficult to understand, but let me explain right away. What I mean by discovering thought is this: Children only perform repetitive behaviors, and there is definitely one thought before the repetitive behavior, but children do not realize it. First, the thought must be discovered. For example, let's imagine a child who constantly washes his hands. When we ask why do you wash your hands all the time, he may say, "I don't know, I don't feel comfortable." However, one click before washing hands, that is, in the scene before washing hands, the child's mind goes through the following: "My hands may be contaminated with germs, a disease may be infected, I should get rid of it by washing my hands, if I don't wash my hands." It infects the house and my parents may die because of the germ that enters the house. I will be responsible for this.'' In fact, the child makes that repetitive movement under the pressure of these thoughts. In other words, there is a very, very meaningful explanation for the child's repetitive behavior; the child does not repeat the same behavior over and over for no reason. Repetitive action is the final scene. The main thing is to be able to change the scenes before the last scene. In other words, when these thoughts come to the child's mind, the child reasons as follows: "Since these thoughts come to my mind, they can come true, otherwise these thoughts would not come to my mind. "Since these thoughts come to my mind, if something bad happens to me, I will be responsible for it. I must do my best not to be responsible, so I should wash my hands a lot so that no one gets infected." When such thoughts pass through the child's mind, he naturally washes his hands many times. We change the meaning that these thoughts come to our mind because it is normal for all of us to have such thoughts. From time to time, thoughts that we may not like may cross our mind. This is explained to the child. ''We all think of it, Thoughts that he doesn't like, doesn't like, or even doesn't want to come to his mind at all come to his mind. "This is a normal situation." It is precisely in the part after this point that the following thought creates OCD from the very beginning: "Since this thought came to my mind, let me ask about what will happen, what comes to my mind is an indication that I can do what comes to my mind." Actually, when we intervene with these thoughts, these thoughts change and when the thought changes, the child's repetitive behavior. He doesn't naturally feel the need to do something.
Sometimes it can be difficult to reach children's thoughts. In these cases, we look at what OCD steals from his life. We examine together what his life would be like if he didn't have OCD, what he would do differently. In other words, the sessions turn into journeys that the child takes to himself. In this case, the child sees the negative impact that OCD has on his life. If the OCD goes away, he realizes the positive changes that will occur in his life, and this motivates the child. Then, we create a hierarchy of repetitive behaviors with the child. Where did hierarchy come from? What does it mean? Even though we, as parents, may not realize it, the anxiety levels experienced by the child when performing repetitive behaviors are actually different. The amount of anxiety he feels when he doesn't wash his hands is not the same as the amount of anxiety he feels if he doesn't wipe his seat, or the amount of anxiety he feels when he doesn't clap 5 times when an unwanted thought crosses his mind. Here we create a hierarchy with the child. From the one that worries him the most to the one that worries him the least. In the sessions, we start working on the smallest behavior that worries us. Self-confidence comes when the child starts from the easiest and can give up the repetitive behavior that is easiest to give up. Then we move together, one by one, towards the top of the hierarchy. We end our sessions when the last step is completed. After the final session, we do 1 more session. In this session, we are working on how to cope if OCD is triggered in the future. This study is also a preventive study.
As a parent, how can I help my child with OCD?
First of all, do not criticize your child. The child does not perform repetitive behavior willingly. The understanding he gives to the thoughts that come to his mind He does it because of his current situation, because he is afraid (Sometimes the child may not realize that he or she is doing repetitive behavior because he or she is worried and afraid, and may say, "I don't know.")
Explain that this is a situation that requires psychological support. If he does not continue regular sessions with a psychologist, explain that this situation will not go away.
Questions your child asks you for relief (e.g. Mom, did I wash my hands, right? I won't get sick, right? We won't be late, right? We won't have an accident, right? ? I wouldn't do anything bad to someone, right? I'm not a bad person, right? I wouldn't hurt someone unintentionally, right? If I go to the toilet outside, I'll get sick, right? We locked the door when Dad left, right?) Say the following: 'These questions are OCD. Say, "The questions that 'makes you ask,' You probably won't need to ask these questions when OCD is gone." In this case, the mother or father naturally says, "Don't worry, nothing will happen, don't think about such things." Saying these things is a behavior that perpetuates our child's OCD, that is, we say it with good intentions as parents, but it does not work, or even worse, we feed the OCD monster. Do not reassure your child by responding to his/her safety behaviors by saying, "Don't worry, nothing will happen, no accident will happen, no disease will be transmitted." Because that relaxation becomes a bait that feeds OCD. Do not feed OCD so that it does not grow.
Contact a psychologist to support your child's sessions.
As a parent, explain this to your child: "We can all get psychological disorders from time to time. Just like we get the flu but then it goes away. Say that this problem you are experiencing will fly away like a bird if you meet with a psychologist.''
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