In January of this year our 13-year-old son displayed major and very debilitating OCD symptoms.

He started to experience terrifying intrusive thoughts which dominated his whole existence.

Several months prior to the intrusive thoughts, he had started to show signs of unusual behaviour and anxiety, we thought it was his caused by hormones.

Initially, he was unable to do anything other than shout, scream and cry. He didn’t sleep, couldn’t sit still and was extremely distressed.

We had set the ball in motion by visiting our Doctor who said that he was going to refer us to a specialist. In the meantime we lived in a fog-like state, desperately trying to find ways to alleviate the anxiety, distract him from his terrifying thoughts and live moment by moment.

We went in search of support, information and ways we could help him whilst waiting for our first appointment with the child psychotherapist.

A close friend suggested hypnotherapy. She herself is a qualified hypnotherapist and recommended the woman she trained with, who has 30 years experience in dealing with different forms of anxiety.

We were a little nervous at the thought of hypnotherapy as we knew very little about it, but were willing to try anything that might help our son.

On our way to the appointment our son was extremely distressed and we really wondered if she would be able to help him.

What followed was, to us, nothing short of miraculous. We stayed with our son the whole time and watched as the hypnotherapist transformed our son into a happy and relaxed teenager. His whole face relaxed, his body stopped tensing and at the end of the session he looked and felt incredibly happy!

Although this feeling of euphoria did not last indefinitely, it gave him a reprieve and a belief that things could get better. We went back several times, the gaps between visits became longer until he no longer felt the need to go. He continues to benefit from the sessions he had and has learnt very useful techniques to help alleviate his anxieties.

His CBT started and was noticeably more painful than the hypnotherapy, but it was working. We felt it better to stick with the CBT in the short term, as we know that it is a recognised and successful form of treatment for OCD, and to allow him to use the relaxation techniques he learnt through hypnotherapy sessions to help him on a day-to-day basis. The combination of the two has helped considerably.

Hypnotherapy is NOT A CURE – there is no known cure as yet for OCD but it most definitely helped and continues to help our son.

I have since started training as a Hypnotherapist so that I can help my son to help himself in the future. It seems logical to me that hypnotherapy can help, after all OCD is an “illness” of the mind and hypnotherapy works directly with the mind. In my opinion it’s worth a try!

I am training at the accredited Belmont Centre where our son went for his hypnotherapy.