My best friend and I just discovered that we both share yet another crazy thing in common, and it just so happens to be OCD. We got to talking about her sister in law, Melissa, who passed away a few years ago in a car accident with another girl, Molly, who was a good friend of mine. We didn't know each other until we started working together last year but once we started talking about the girls we made a connection and hit it off. She and I managed to bring them up earlier tonight, and in doing so, discovered that we both deal with very similar issues as far as OCD goes. However, the death of the girls obviously affected us both on two totally different levels as I was not as close with Molly as she was with Melissa, with her being her sister in law and best friend. So I don't feel like my opinions or help are really making her feel any better about the situation she deals with on a daily basis. My friend now has a 4 year old daughter and she said that she has horrible anxiety and always feels as though something is going to happen to her or to her other loved ones. Understandably. But she mentioned that for 99% of her day she deals with obsessive thoughts and compulsions that she can't seem to get control of despite being on an anti depressant for it. She said she doesn't feel like she has ever really coped with the loss of her sister in law and doesn't know if/when she will ever stop obsessing over it or stop having to do the “rituals” she does anytime she says “key words” that she thinks will bring harm to someone if she says them. For example- she said for a long time after the girls' death she couldn't say the word “never” without having to “take it back” in her head because things DO happen and saying that it never will might jynx it. She said it seemed like it had to deal with the fact that the girls were taken so suddenly with no warning and we were all blindesided by the accident. So the real concern here is that she now works 50+ hours a week on little sleep and she has an adventurous child so she is constantly stressed, tired, and paranoid. But how after such a long time do you cope with a tragedy like that? After having already gone through the initial shock, greif, confusion, etc? And with the way she has responded to it that last 5 years, will having to recope with it set her back even further? I don't feel like I'm saying the right things to her, and I noticed that as we were talking she was performing one of the rituals she had told me about. I suggested that she join the tribe and she said she would check it out, but I'm just curious as to how I can help her get to a state where she is happy more often than not.

Thanks