Wow, been like 6 years now. We gave up on therapy for our daughter because she is 100% unwilling to take part in Dr.s instructions, is and has been constantly beligerent, and forces us into rituals like "Taking things back" 100 times. Now she is a mom at 18 and boyfriend lives with us for a year too. Yet, he does not know that she has OCD!!!??? She hides it in front of him but when he is away or out of sight, she starts in with me, my wife and my other 15 year old daughter. We have been through 7+ psychologists, several psychiatrists, she spit out meds, lied about it, is totally uncooperative, yet demands and expects everything from us. But now, we have a grandchild to consider so cannot do a "tough love" approach and kick her out. One psychiatrist stated we needed to let her hit rock bottom but now, there is a little darling baby in the picture. We'd be letting him hit rock bottom too. So we are trapped with her behavior issues.
She has really tortured us for 6 years with the worst beligerent cursing, kicking holes in walls etc. . I know, she tortures herself too, but literally, anything I ask of her, she does the opposite.
Now she ritualizes making a bottle sometimes for 45 minutes while the baby cries. What to do???? She goes ballistic when I interfere, and I start to lose it and finally scream at her.
She never cooperated with even the slightest behaviour mod exersises perscibed by any of the psychologists. Our last therapist went as far to state to us and her that she was delusional and basically a brat.
I see her as heading for a mental hospital if this keeps up. She has little control and totally succumbs to the OCD . Our family cannot have a normal conversation with her without her accusing, questioning us, making us repeat things, state that we are looking at her the wrong way, breathing the wrong way etc. We just no longer know what to do. What can anyone advise? If I were to go through the everyday list of the things she does that are making us all crazy in the house, it would take an hour. We do not have a normal life with her here, yet she cannot take care of herself, and the boyfriend is not much better as far as being able to support her or him or the baby.
I recently went to a local OCD workshop about having family members with OCD. I may still have the handout. One of the main things the OCD specialists emphasized was NOT giving in to the family member with OCD as far as reassuring them or becoming part of their compulsions and rituals. It only leads to more. They said to say something along the lines of "sorry, cannot do that, it would be enabling your OCD".
Now I know it is probably much more difficult to do than to say your'e going to do.It sounds like OCD has taken over the house at this point. I wouldn't be surpised if this is very common though, especially with younger adults. It has to be very hard to not give in to someone you love who is suffering. You want them to feel better, so you do what you think is "helping" her or shutting her up, but it only causes the OCD to grow and want more. That reassurance or taking something back that used to work after saying it once, now needs to be done multiple times for her to get that actual "feeling" of being reassured.
It is hard not for a lot of us with OCD to succumb to OCD. We get intrusive thoughts, that generate false emotions and feelings of absolute horror an, so we do compulsions or some of us ask others to do certain things to "solve" that feeling or make it feel better. These thoughts are often illogical, but "feel" probable, real or logical. They don't make sense, but feel like they do. When people without OCD try to treat or help someone by using logic, it doesn't work well, if at all. OCD is based more on feelings than logic. You can say something to her a million times, and it can be 100% fact, but if it doesn't feel that way in her brain or emotionally, then it doesnt matter. She wants it to feel absolute.
OCD feeds on doubt, so we will work hours to get a few seconds of that feeling of "just right". Not much later, another intrusive thought comes along , causes us to doubt and feel uncomfortable, then the process starts over. The better solution, especially for the rest of you, would be to at least not give in to being apart of her compulsions. If you can eliminate yourselves from volunteering to take part in her compulsions, it would be a great step for her and the rest of your family. Im sure you have all heard it before though, with all the doctors you have been to. The rest of what she is choosing to do and not to do is up to her. That makes it very difficult. She just had a baby too, which can also cause OCD activity to increase. I hope and pray that you all find some sort of relief and comfort, and she calms down enough to decide to try and help herself as much as you have all tried to help her.
Yes, we stopped taking part in the rituals. At one time, she became so wild and destructive that we were told it might be the lesser of two evils if we took part just to calm her down. She was supposed to then also engage in the exposure therapy in very small ways but once out of the Dr.'s office, she reneged.
I am very aware of the OCD becoming more powerful and in truth, the last 8 months, she does solo OCD rituals mostly. However, in a defacto way now, I am being ordered by her to not interfere while she obsesses on the bottle preperation so in a way, I am once again being asked to take part by turning a blind eye. We have our daily wars about this.
I work out of the home so am always here. Thanks for the advice. I realize that the inner dynamics of the OCD for her is something I can only imagine. Would be interesting for a documentary to attempt to reproduce this internal perspective so that others without OCD might understand the "feelings" of being immersed within it's grasp.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. There is not much down here in the rural areas in terms of OCD specific treatment. I used to travel with her to appointments and those trips were literally torture for me honestly. Try coming to a psychiatry appoinement 2 hours away, 20 minutes late because she couldn't leave the house on time. I cursed at every red light as I raced to make the appt on time .
Dr. threatened to terminate our relationship. Dr. was good. She understood but was stacked with a busy patient schedule. We stopped seeing her at preganancy and have not gone back since. Not sure what good it did in the end without the cooperation of my daughter.
I also believe she should hit bottom. You could take her to court when the time arises and have her declared an unfit mother. Sooner or later the bf will latch on to her behavior. He may really up and split. She can control what she does, if she can hide this stuff from him In the meantime consider her impact of the members of the family and her right to do that.
 Yes but there are always implications to actions.I know, she can control the OCD out of embarrasment but then payback is a “you know what”. The dam breaks. If we could have a normal conversation, she’d hear what I am saying: “I see the future for her if things do not change”,  and her future looks a lot like your response below, to my blog. She needs to know this is the likely outcome. Before the baby, I went to the police several times for various reasons, filed a malicious destruction complaint. It really did no good.
Thanks for the input though. We went to enroll her in a boarding school which was pure total control and no nonsense for troubled teens but then, the pregnancy happened. It was too late.
She is my daughter and while we do suffer as a result of her behavior still, I am very apprehensive about stigmatizing her which may add to her very poor self image. Lucky I have another child who is very much an achiever and respectful, or I’d be blamed for the other’s behaviour as ‘too lenient a parent, an an enabler” etc. However, I am the one who filed police reports, malicious destruction reports, etc. It just did not darn good.
She’s not in control of the OCD and it is obvious that her condition is OCD + stress disorders + Â being incredibly hard headed and controlling. But she is really making her own bed and I seem to never want to give up trying to change her course.
Such a difficult situation and it sounds like there's more to it than just OCD, and it isn't entirely uncontrollable if she hides this completely from her boyfriend.
I'm not really sure what to advise, you've obviously tried a lot of things – would she be at all open to a forum like this place? With all the therapists etc that she's seen, she obviously knows about OCD but would it be helpful to her to come on here and talk to other people with OCD?