Re:OCD with children

I recently was watching a video in which an 11 year-old describes his experience with OCD and CBT for OCD*. He mentions that his therapist had him think of his OCD as a bully named Oscar.

The kid doesn't go into much detail about how his therapist explained OCD and the rationale for E&RP. However, I can imagine the therapist using the analogy of dealing with OCD the way you would deal with a bully.

If a bully is picking on me and I go along with the bully, he may let up on me for the moment but it won't be long until he's picking on me again. The more I go along with the bully, the more he'll pick on me. On the other hand, if I can find a way to stand up to the bully and make it stick, the bully will be tougher on me at the moment but, if I can make it stick, he'll back off and pick on me a lot less. What we need to do with OCD is help the kid figure out how to stand up to the OCD and make it stick rather than giving in to the OCD.

It seems like that might be a pretty good way to introduce E&RP to a kid. Ideally, I'd use a lot of guided discovery so that I'm getting the kid to explain to me how to deal with bullys and how you'd apply that with OCD.

*By the way, the video I was watching is from a 2 video set "How to Recognize and Respond to OCD in School Aged Children" that the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation produced to help educate teachers about childhood OCD. It's quite good and not expensive. It can be ordered from http://www.ocfoundation.org.

Replies:

Re:OCD with children, by Joop Meijers, 03/24/02

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