I hope you will join me to learn more about others caring for children suffering from the various forms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is through the sharing of our personal triumphs and battles, struggles and gains that we all become more empowered. Our empowerment provides us a place to turn and learn enabling us to better care for our children through their own struggles.
January 18, 2012
Together
By LISA DOUGLAS
About LISA DOUGLAS
Foremost, I am an OCD awareness, treatment and long-term recovery: advocate, spokesperson, consultant, supporter, and educator.
I am the mother and sole provider of care for an amazingly smart, witty, charismatic, 13 year old daughter, Alexandra, who was severely debilitated by OCD. The apex of Alexandra’s journey to simply be like ‘normal’ people is marked by her recent, astonishing ascent from the subterranean bowels of OCD Hell she has inhabited for as long as she can remember, to becoming freed to, once again, walk alongside and among the “land of the living.”
Over these past nine years and all the realizations I’ve made regarding the mental health system, its profession and providers, society’s stigmas, discrimination, accusations, insurance debacles and all else involved, I’ve been making belief, someone, someday will help my progressively declining child who’s Y-BOCS consistently remained between 34 and 40 for the past 6 whole years!
Until this past April, she and I have been on an endless quest for proper treatment which would help to alleviate and, ultimately, release her from the incomprehensibly horrific, all-consuming, self-harming, isolated purgatory from which she was ever-increasingly, perpetually trapped by her obsessions and rituals. Earlier this year, our seemingly last hope for help was to be an extended stay at Rogers Memorial but after months of fighting with her 2 insurance companies over denying coverage for admittance, I was at my wits end, again! Having immersed myself into the global OCD community for many years seeking help, advice, guidance, etc., I came across a post seeking beta study participants using an app for ERP. Immediately, I applied for my daughter. The director/doctor was very hesitant as Alex’s OCD was so extreme. However, with a lot of persuasion, a remarkably wise and kind doctor, as well as, an enormous ‘leap of faith,’ we began using the app from LiveOCDFree.
She has been diligently working with the Live OCD Free app for the past 3 months. During this short time, with much hard work and determination, she has achieved remarkable progress against her, previously omnipresent, OCD symptoms! Her OCD had forced her into seclusion, isolation, and painful 4+ hour ritualistic decontamination showers and had even left her unable to touch or breathe the air of those she loves. Remarkably, Alexandra can now walk anywhere and touch almost everything freely. She can hug and spend time with loved-ones and friends without decontaminating. Ali’s showers are now only 25-minutes and do not involve any painful rituals. She continues to work to conquer her remaining OCD issues and anticipates, in time, a full recovery from the OCD which has plagued her since the age of four.
Alexandra, and I, want nothing more than to lead a revolution against this insidious, debilitating monster we call OCD! To help others see how much hope there is with proper treatment, she and I are documenting her OCD recovery process and history through Facebook.com/ LiveOCDFree, Twitter: LiveOCDFree, YouTube.com/LiveOCDFree, OCDKids.wordpress.com and LiveOCDFree.com.
Please, join and /or follow her journey so you can be aware of OCD, too.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 10:27 am and posted in Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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OCD Kids 
January 28th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
I feel so sorry for you, i have a twelve year old son with severe ocd too and find it near impossible not to offer reassurance when he is fisting his face to make the thoughts go away, my son has fear of death cancer and terminal illness he has a small germ fear where he doesnt like other peoples germs. I hope your daughter gets all the support she needs good luck!!!
February 1st, 2012 at 11:39 am
Is your son in therapy? If so, are you having any success? If not, why? All her previous therapist’s have given up on her and I can’t find a new therapist who will take insurance. Have you run across this problem?
How do you handle his situation on an on-going basis? My daughter is completely against all recovery methods, believing she is incurable. She has severe Recovery Avoidance (RA) which makes daily living simply impossible. Any dialog with her results in her hysterically crying and stating that I just don’t understand. Her fears of contamination have taken over all aspects of our lives.
February 8th, 2013 at 7:35 pm
I found a very useful Book about dealing with OCD for children!
http://www.abcocd.com/