Family and Friends

Families and carers have an important role in giving practical and emotional support to someone with OCD. If you care for someone with OCD, finding out about the condition, and understanding what your loved one is going through, is perhaps the most important thing that you can do.

When tackling OCD, knowledge is power! The more you learn about OCD, the better equipped you will be to deal with its many faces and the problems that it will cause your loved one and the rest of your family.

Families and friends can find their lives disrupted by the OCD sufferer’s obsessions and compulsions. The natural instinct is to play along with the strange behaviour in order to avoid upsetting the sufferer further; this may seem to make life easier, but it will not help recovery. Trying to placate the sufferer in this way can reinforce the behaviour in response to the obsessions. Should this happen, discuss it with the sufferer’s psychologist or therapist so that he or she can help you to avoid taking part in the OCD, while continuing to help the sufferer. There will be the odd occasion when you have to play the OCD ‘game’ and give the sufferer reassurance, but this needs to be infrequent. The only way to help the sufferer in the long term is for you to be strong and stand up to the OCD!

We recommend that you sit down as a family and draw up a ‘contract’ of how you will not let the OCD interfere with family life any more, and how the sufferer and the rest of the family will work together to tackle the OCD. Finding the balance between standing up to the OCD and not overly distressing the sufferer is the reason that constant communication is vital.

Remember that OCD symptoms may wax and wane. On some days the sufferer may be able to deal better with symptoms than on others. Each sufferer needs to overcome problems at his/her own pace, even though this may be a lengthy process.

In some cases the person with OCD will refuse treatment, or may not even admit that there is a problem at all. This action may cause even more distress for those around. In this case you could offer educational materials to the person, maybe leaving them around the house in the hope that he/she will pick them up to read at a later stage.

With OCD, knowledge is the key power!

It is also important that if you are the family member or friend who is closest to the sufferer you do not take too much on yourself. It is vital to make time for yourself, and, if need be, seek support for yourself. Sharing your worries and experiences with others who have gone through the same things can be a huge help. Support groups are a good way to feel less alone and to learn new strategies for coping and helping the sufferer. The OCD-UK online Bulletin Board forums also have a section specifically for family and friends, and are free to use at www.ocdforums.org. The vital thing to remember is that you must not take too much on your own shoulders and make yourself ill, because that benefits nobody.

Although many of the sufferer's rituals can be time consuming and strange, it is vital that family members do not make criticisms or negative comments, as this will often make things worse and more distressing for the sufferer. Telling someone with OCD to simply stop his/her compulsive behaviours will not work at all. Imagine yourself at a cinema with a slight cold - you try to stop yourself coughing and, inevitably, the more you try to suppress it the more you cough. This is what it is like for someone with OCD when being pressured to stop their behaviours without the coping mechanisms provided by therapy. Instead, praise any successful attempts to resist OCD, while focusing your attention on positive elements in the sufferer’s life. You must avoid expecting too much or too little.

We hope to expand this section even more in the future but for now we have put together some resources which we hope will help provide more support.

 

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