When my child is suffering from OCD behavior, one way I can help him is by helping myself first.
By asking myself: Am I catastrophizing here? Am I afraid that my child’s behavior is not normal? That I have to fix it immediately? Am I in panic mode about his behavior and worrying about his future?
To support myself, I can presence myself to who my child is underneath his behavior, put on my empathy lens, and let go of the catastrophizing.
With my empathy lens on for us both, I am stronger and more aligned with my most skilled self, so that I can be in a better position to support him.
For me, supporting my child looks like ‘acceptance right now’.
And it also looks like modifying his environment any way I can to remove the stressors that are causing him to use unhealthy coping strategies just to deal with them.
In fact, I believe that OCD itself is an unhealthy coping strategy.
Modifying his environment might look like temporarily dropping some of my expectations around school or chores, or it might look like not setting time limits on his interests, which for him, means Minecraft.
Because my son gets scared of things, another way of modifying his environment is by being careful not to have any triggering content on our adult screens.
And perhaps the most important modification: not to have any dramatic reactions to his triggers that could inadvertently criticize or shame, or make him feel unsafe.
When I’m calm, I feel safe, and therefore I’m in much more of a position to practice self-leadership. And my behavior then role models this behavior for my son, so that he can feel calm and safe, and realize that he too can practice self-leadership.
When we’re both calm, I can try asking some questions. An example might be: “Can we fact-check this fear? Can we go through the steps of the worst thing that could happen if...”
We also add a lot of humor if it’s the right space to do so. Humor at the right moment is our favorite antidote to destructive coping mechanisms.
From what I’ve noticed, my child benefits a lot from strategies that help him cope creatively with what feels out of control.
One strategy is to reframe the situation—to introduce the idea that he can be in charge of where his focus is directed. And that by redirecting his focus, he will grow stronger, because redirecting his focus is like lifting weights to strengthen the mind.
Another strategy to help him redirect his focus is with metaphors.
Like—“You know how you direct your computer’s search engine to focus on the information you need or want? Well, that’s similar to the way you can direct your own attention, to focus on the information you need or want in the search engine of your brain.
Just like you’re the operator of your computer, you can actually learn to be the operator of your own attention, so that every whim in your brain doesn’t grab for your attention first.”
I can make my kid laugh by asking him what he imagines his computer would do if it had an auto-search. What would his computer randomly search for and what would his computer make the information mean about itself? His computer might get pretty frazzled! It might crash! It might keep trying to make sense of all this random information because it’s lost its purpose!
With this metaphor, my kid gets that if he’s not the meaning maker for what he’s focusing on in his life, his fears and insecurities may very well make the meaning for him.
With this metaphor, he gets to realize how important it is to get to know himself as the operator of his focus and as the meaning maker of his life.
Because really, it’s the meaning he makes about what he focuses on that gives power to all those suggestions and thoughts in the search engine of his mind.
One way to appoint oneself as the meaning maker of one’s own life is to begin to think about what’s important to you. Is it to be happy? To be connected? To have fun? To discover interesting stuff? To be kind? To be a great communicator?
Our purpose can be worn like lenses to help us focus on the things that are aligned with our purpose.
Just like my son has a purpose when he goes to search for what he needs on his computer, focusing through the lens of his purpose can help him choose what information he wants to focus on in his mind.
If he runs across scary stuff or anxious stuff in his mind, with the lens of his purpose in place, he will know not to ‘click' on those things for more information, simply because those things don't support his purpose.
To strengthen his purpose we use affirmations:
“I am worthy. I am a complex wonder. I have so many ideas and impressions and thoughts and feelings inside of me from every experience I’ve ever had.
I can use my time to ‘click' on upsetting things, or I can use my time to create projects and connections that match up with the purpose I have created for myself and my life.”
By giving my kid strategies to strengthen his focus, he will be in a better position to practice self-leadership, instead of self-control. Self-control is for controlling behavior. But self-leadership is having the skills to figure out what’s important to us and developing strength by practicing redirecting our focus to support what’s important to us.
And as a parent, when I’m able to practice these strategies myself, and be able to direct my own focus and attention towards empathy and calm and away from catastrophizing, I can begin to role model this behavior for my kid.
Here are a couple other episodes that talk about similar things: