(Part 3) Top products from r/OCD

Sorry to hear that your family's going through a tough time right now. It certainly does sound like OCD (not sure what else it can be). OCD can really get everyone in the family involved - you're certainly not the first concerned relative who's had to watch a dear sibling or child in the grips of the monster that is OCD.

To help her get over this as quickly as possible, be a cheerleader, not a judge. You're not angry at her, you're angry at the OCD, right? Because how dare it have taken over your poor sister like this, and MADE her waste her days doing strange gestures, and forced her to feel these terrible feelings of panic. OCD is being a total asshole to her, and it's not fair! In my own OCD recovery, my partner helped me a lot by pointing this out - when I'd succeed at a therapy exercise even though I was very anxious, he'd say 'Man, I just want to punch your OCD in the face! How dare it go around making you feel guilty and telling you you're a bad person, when I love you so much and know what a nice person you are. We have to fight back against this horrible lying monster!'.

So you need to let your sister know that you love her and that you're on her side, and you want to unite together with her to fight against the OCD. She's ill right now and she needs a coach and a nurse all-in-one to get back to a healthy state.

You say 'she puts herself in a state of fear and anxiety', which sounds a bit blamey, to be entirely honest. She doesn't WANT to do these compulsions any more than you want to watch her do them. At the moment, yes, I think she probably does truly believe that she NEEDS to do these actions or terrible things will happen. From her OCD-influenced point of view, she feels that she's in severe immediate danger and she's just trying to make herself safe. She's not doing these things to annoy you. OCD can feel incredibly convincing, even delusional, especially when it strikes someone very young and untrained in dealing with it. That's why she's going to need a lot of love and support, to feel safe enough to start cutting out the compulsions. You're right that she does have the ability to stop, and that she must begin doing so. But she's young and scared, so you need to really ease her into doing it with lots of praise and encouragement, even for the tiniest baby steps.

Try and get to the bottom of why she has this 'negative attitude' you speak of. It could be that she's not making any effort to recover, sure. It could be that she's stubborn or manipulative, fair enough. But then again, OCD sufferers can come across as irritable, uncooperative or even violent because the fear they feel is so extreme - I mean, if you felt the level of terror that she's probably feeling right now (imagine standing in the middle of the road with a huge truck about to run you over and you're probably close), then you too would want to keep doing the things that made you feel safer rather than the things that seem like pointless distractions! So try to figure out if she's appearing 'negative' simply because she's so scared. You'll need to show her very clearly that it's ok for her to do the things you are suggesting to help her (runs? You mean like, going running? That'll help a bit, sure). If she doesn't see any evidence that she can recover by doing these things, then you need to persuade her with more reassurance and evidence.

Are you getting her the right kind of therapy? It's REALLY important to do this. Sadly, a lot of us OCD sufferers were experimented on like guinea pigs by therapists who fancied trying out whatever fashionable new talk-therapy they liked on us, and actually made our OCD worse, before we finally got the right kind of help. The only kind of therapy that's really been proven to work on OCD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy plus Exposure and Response Prevention (you'll see these referred to as ERP and CBT on OCD websites). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can also help a bit, but if her current therapist is not offering any kind of ERP, sorry, but fire her. If you don't know what kind of therapy she's been giving your sister, ask. Your sister is never going to recover from her OCD if all the therapist wants to do is have wishy-washy chats about her feelings and her childhood, and get her to do relaxing breathing exercises or whatever. That is NOT the scientifically-proven method for fixing OCD and it's a waste of time. ERP works because it involves confronting your fears in a gradual way, which teaches the brain to desensitize and calm down.

It might be helpful to your sister to read up on OCD in an age-appropriate way. If she starts to see that what's going on in her head is not her personal genuine scary problem, but actually a recognised illness that lot of people experience, she should start to view her OCD differently. There are some excellent young-adult books on OCD, fiction and self-help, and if she's into reading, you could buy her a few and encourage her to read about people in the same situation as her. Here's a short list of some that might be best for a twelve-year-old girl:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Breaking-Free-OCD-People-Families/dp/1843105748/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1473007685&sr=8-3&keywords=ocd+children
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Talking-Back-OCD-Program-Parents/dp/1593853556/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PPNTD5PXEVYREB793ZN5
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Ocd-Workbook-Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder/dp/1572248483/ref=pd_sim_14_11?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=V7FKXWD86S23T76JWGSD
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Am-Normal-Yet-Spinster-Club/dp/1409590305/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473007884&sr=1-4&keywords=holly+bourne
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rest-Just-Live-Here-shortlisted-ebook/dp/B00X5HR42C/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473007993&sr=1-6&keywords=ocd+teen

Read up on OCD as much as you can, too. Knowledge is power! OCD can't play its sneaky tricks on you if you're well-educated about it and you see them coming. There are also lots of excellent short videos on YouTube, made by OCD specialists and people who've recovered. For yourself and your sister, I would recommend the channel ShalomAleichem {Mental Health Vlogs}, as these OCD videos are bite-sized, friendly, and run by another teen girl:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBh-jGXvOPvdvqlloYGBLkQ

Good luck with getting some professional help for your sister, and I hope that she's able to find some relief and feel better soon!

I was reading an interview with Maria Bamford where she name dropped the book "Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals". I was fully compelled to buy it once I found out that the author of it also suffers from OCD, and it shows in how he writes the book. He writes from the perspective of a couple of case studies, always keeping things interesting, and it's a great read. I'd definitely reccomend it. It also covers a bit of the history of ocd, some of which is about religious figures (scrupulosity was VERY prominent in certain famous Christian figures) and the various theories of what causes ocd.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0440508479/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

I'd also reccomend a funny memoir written by a college-age sufferer, it's just an enjoyable read. He details his bout with ocd in college and it's very witty.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312622104/ref=pd_aw_sims_5?pi=SY115&simLd=1

And lastly, this may be a bit off topic, but I'd reccomend Nikola Tesla's memoirs. They are a series of 3 or so articles he wrote for an engineering magazine, and in it he gives vivid details of how his obsessive thoughts inspired him to become an abstract thinker who could, essentially, build a machine in his head. He clearly suffered from OCD, probably Pure-O and social anxiety. He talks about having intrusive thoughts, and I found it so fascinating that I had many of the same daydreams that he has (he talks about wanting to project his mental images on a screen, I feel like OCD caused me to have the same wish), and it was awesome and startling.

This is the version I got. Found it in Barnes and Noble. Make sure to check that the one you get has the original text, some books use altered text and have spelling mistakes. I've found that this version of the memoirs has original text with a nice intro, though it also does not include the diagrams from the original articles (though they're all online anyways). I'd reccomend this version for sure.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143106619?cache=01fd22648c4f493c36b2eaf0e89ced91&pi=SY200_QL40&qid=1408880250&sr=1-2#ref=mp_s_a_1_2

Here are two quotes from it I love:
"I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers."

"Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price."

Happy Reading!

Self-diagnosis can lead to trouble, but these are good interim practices: self-educating (so long as it's not distressing to you) and self-treatment (to the extent of journaling to identify OCD triggers, experimenting with herbal supplements, exercising regimens to relieve stress, and establishing a solid schedule for the sake of keeping your mind/body busy and confident about what's going to happen next). The book I'd recommend for you is The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing. Despite the misleading title (the book is actually a collection of brief memoirs from people with different types of OCD followed by medical commentary), it's actually one of the best books I've read for explaining OCD - "the doubting disease" - "the epistemic illness".

Question (feel free to PM your response, if you'd prefer): Are you more upset about what could be going on inside your head or what is going on in there? In my case, what helped me cope with the "not knowing" was imagining worse-case scenarios (usually because I couldn't help it, to be honest) and slowly, slooowly adopting an understanding that their implications in my mind, however real they felt, couldn't affect my real life. It was a kind of self-correcting Rational Emotive Therapy and I'm still an overly-critical perfectionist at times, but I don't stress about hypothetical scenarios anymore. I'd also strongly recommend reading the first few pages of Lee Baer's The Imp of the Mind, which can be found for free here.

The urge to balance out sensations is called somatic symmetry and most people don't find this too distressing on the whole - usually just distracting or embarrassing if there's no way to do it without being obvious. That said, if a person's been burned, pricked, etc, and feels the need to recreate the sensation on the other side of his/her body, that can obviously cause distress. The last time that happened to me, I quickly removed myself from the environment I was in to weaken the temptation to reproduce the sensation. You'll see this exact thing depicted in TV shows like Monk. One insight that may help you understand somatic symmetry is that OCD and Tourette Syndrome are neurologically associated comorbid conditions. In fact, people with both (as well as their clinicians) frequently report being unable to tell the difference between an obsessive-compulsive urge for a compulsion vs. a Tourettic urge for a tic. When the sensations are so similar, some clinicians refer to the symptoms as Tourettic OCD (TOCD) and you can read about it here. In any case (OCD, TS, or TOCD), phenomenological descriptions (how it feels) typically cite the sensation of something like needing to clear your throat or an "itch" that needs to be scratched. Like if I'm asking someone to scratch a certain spot on my back, they need to get the right spot, pressure, and duration or the itch won't go away. If you do a lot of reading about OCD subtypes, though, and still don't understand it all, don't sweat it. Even the people who've published scientific journal articles on TOCD don't entirely understand it. We all just have to do our best.

Asperger's is often associated with single-minded, obsessive, and analytical thinking. But so is OCD. The difference tends to be that in Asperger's, the things obsessed about aren't necessarily associated with the condition directly and don't necessarily cause distress: e.g., A person with Asperger's may be intensely interested in studying law, or building cars, or Chess, and find that these preoccupations don't cause any distress whatsoever. In OCD, the rule is that the preoccupation must cause you distress or it's not strictly speaking an obsession. A distinguishing question will be this: Do you have frequent trouble empathizing with others and understanding why they have the emotional reactions they do? If not, Asperger's becomes less likely.

This is all I have time to write for now, but I wish you the best of luck in learning about your stressors and finding relief.

Learn as much as you can about OCD, and do you best to retain your roll as a loved one.


Bibliotherapy is helpful. So read up, as much for yourself as them.

Here's a great book that touches on some forms of OCD.

I've found this structure of communication during severe episode of OCD helpful:

LEAP: Listen, Empathize, Agree, Partner.

Reflective listening is key. Hear out your friend/family member completely, genuinely, and act like a reporter who is trying to learn all you can without judgement about what they live with. "It sounds like you don't want to live life like this, and you want things to change".

Empathize with the emotional difficulty of their disorder, and don't force your onions of treatment (i.e. you need to check into rehab, you need to be with a therapist, etc.). "It must be tough to feel unhealthy all the time, like you could be better".

Agree on things often to build trust. "I too want you to have a higher quality life."

Partner to work towards a solution. "I would love to help you get help, and we can find someone together. I'm just here for you to get through this"

This is a great book on the subject.

Not a doctor, just a husband with a loved one with a mental illness.

at the program i worked at, we considered perfectionism a form of ocd. not that all perfectionism is ocd, but it can certainly escalate to that point of disorder. luckily, all the same treatment applies - learning to reframe your thinking (perfect is a fantasy, not reality; there are more options than perfect & failure - lots of things can be "good enough") and practicing exposure to do things imperfectly on purpose and letting the discomfort rise then fall.

if you want a qualified therapist to work on this, check out the directory at www.ocfoundation.org.

there's also a good book written by one of the top ocd/anxiety therapists and researchers in the U.S. -

http://www.amazon.com/The-Perfectionists-Handbook-Criticism-Mistakes/dp/0470923369

good luck!

Disclaimer Although I am a licensed, professional counselor, there are limitations as to what types of services I can provide in an online context. I am participating here as a counseling professional to help answer general questions regarding symptoms and treatment options based on my years of experience in the field. Comments made here are not a substitute for an in-person meeting with a mental health provider in order to get either an official diagnosis and/or on-going therapy. Any answers given by myself are meant as guidance to appropriate services and to better inform those feeling confused about themselves, their symptoms, and starting to navigate the mental health process. They are my opinions and I do not speak for any current/former employers. If your problems are of an URGENT nature or you feel you may be a DANGER TO YOURSELF OR OTHERS, PLEASE IMMEDIATELY CALL 911 or go directly to a hospital ER unit.

There are a two workkbooks that I can think of off the top of my head.

There is The OCD Workbook: Your Guide to Breaking Free from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Bruce M. Hyman. It is does a pretty good job in what it sets out to do and there are less expensive editions of the same book available on Amazon.

One that I haven't gone through yet goes by the title of The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD: A Guide to Overcoming Obsessions and Compulsions Using Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Jon Hershfield and Tom Corboy. I am not sure if it touches upon ERP (Exposure Response Prevention). It has gotten great reviews though!

Best of luck!

It might help if your deficient in Tryptophan but your body has systems in place that prevents excess 5-HTP and Tryptophan from unnaturally raising serotonin to high. This is why studies are so mixed on the effectiveness of supplements.

SSRI and other drugs, bypass the bodies natural limiting system and raises levels of serotonin artifically, However, SSRI and other prescription drugs also have a lot of side effect because SSRI raise serotonin higher than the body would normally regulate.

Supplements (like 5-HTP) typically have less side effects (but they can to have side effects).


There was an interesting NPR on supplementing with probiotics and reducing anxiety in mice
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/18/244526773/gut-bacteria-might-guide-the-workings-of-our-minds

Also look up the supplement NAC, I've had some results with it.
Inositol is another supplement they may help with OCD, but it give me insomnia.

Go to the Library and read
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Food-Chemicals-Thoughts/dp/0195388542

It really helps explain how supplements, drugs, and foods effect the brain. It also helped explain for me why Drugs have so many unintended side effects.

Some other natural ways of improving brain health.

Mindfulness Meditation has been shown to raise levels of Serotonin, GABA, and Dompamine while lower Cortisol (Stress Hormone)
Ditto for Exercise

I've found colouring to be a very simple and calming activity. I highly recommend it. You can even find books that are geared toward adults and are more interesting and challenging than children's colouring books. I've really been enjoying this one recently.

I am new to this forum but thought you might find this short eBook helpful. It is probably aimed at kids a bit younger than yourself but I really think the strategies and advice could be useful to anybody of any age. It is occasionally free so look out for that.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y17NMBZ

There's a book called Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Spencer Hesser that follows a pre-teen/teenage girl as she develops and manages her OCD symptoms. It also features another character with OCD who helps her (and she helps him in turn). Good read.

Go to amazon and look up this book. Read the pages that it will let you read (read them all from start to finish) and see if it describes you. When my doc first said OCD I was like really? But then I read that and it was spot on, I'm totally a classic case. Now I have been through a lot trying to figure out what will help... including SSRIs, therapy, supplements, etc. I think the thing that is helping me most right now is learning about histadelia and primarily using SAMe. That makes my pure-o SOOOOOOOOOO much more manageable, it's ridiculous.

Also, I read this book. It's a quick read and somewhat helpful -- though I chose to skip over the chapters where he outlines every single OCD trigger he has... frankly I don't need more new ones.

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Reasonable-Doubt-Reasoning-Obsessive-Compulsive/dp/0470868775/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1449694000&sr=8-12&keywords=beyond+reasonable+doubt
This is the book I mentioned, I'm currently reading. It is expensive but you can probably email the authors (met them, very nice people) to get a copy. Their approach seems intuitively more right to me than others I've seen. But that would be too long to explain here. Will make a post. Google inference based approach

Yes, confronting your fears will cause stress and sadness.

But: keep the long term goal in mind. You are working on improving yourself, and facing your fears is a huge part of this. You will come out stronger in the end.

As mentioned here, get help from a therapist. And read this book, it is very accessible and helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Control-Overcoming-Obsessions-Compulsions/dp/0452297850

DM if you want to.

This is the best one I know of. It is mostly religious but addresses moral scrupulosity: http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubting-Disease-Scrupulosity-Compulsions/dp/0809135531

I know you have already tried many things, and therapy. But here are my 2 cents. Try this book, Overcoming OCD by David Veale. Its fantastic. It is the core book used by therapists who are leaders in the field. So if you cant afford the fancy OCD programs, try this book. They literally use it in their own treatment programs.

https://www.amazon.ca/Overcoming-Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder-Behavioral/dp/046501108X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483455743&sr=8-1&keywords=Overcoming+Obsessive+Compulsive+Disorder

Different methods work for different people, but I find a good combo is using SSRI meds to bring the anxiety/OCD down to manageable levels and then using CBT such as Exposure Response Prevention to then treat the OCD, and then keep going and slowly reduce the medication, to the point where you no longer need the meds, and the CBT is what is keeping the OCD at bay. Using this approach I have seen OCD virtually disappear but you need to keep a wary eye to the signs and symptoms and fight it quickly if it ever creeps back.

My therapist gave me his therapists guide to ERP to read. It was a decent read and gave me a lot of insight into treating ocd. This is the book and you can also get a workbook with it, but I haven't looked at the workbook.

It's called body dysmorphic disorder. Read The Broken Mirror

Yes, I can relate to this. I haven’t read this yet, but it is on my list. It may be of interest to you.

Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470401818/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_coPIBbRGEJ994