Stronger

When I am working with clients with OCD, I often speak to family members or significant others about things they may be doing to accommodate their loved one’s OCD.  These include things like providing reassurance, helping with checking compulsions, providing excessive amounts of soap, etc. Accommodating behaviors are intended to help. Unfortunately, they only help to make OCD symptoms worse and need to be reined in. 

Of course, it is easy for me to explain the danger of accommodating behaviors and instruct others as to how to gradually strip these behaviors away or discontinue them altogether. It is much harder to be the one to have to follow through with this. Fear is usually the most common inhibiting factor… fear of causing a loved one to suffer, fear of how a loved one may react, fear of it not working, etc.  Although I am very careful not to provide reassurance to clients, even when it is sought after in the subtlest of ways, it is rare that I am able to be on the frontline of facing any of the other real challenges that often arise when OCD demands are not met.

Recently, I was given the opportunity to practice what I preach. It was a true test of my trust in the process of ERP, my trust in the strength of a dear client (who was convinced she had no power over her OCD), and my trust in my own resolve as a therapist.  In this unique situation, I found myself able to offer my client two equally challenging options…one that involved my help to challenge her OCD, and the other to figure out the situation on her own without my help (likely involving very time-consuming, soul sucking rituals). What wasn’t an option (at least from my perspective) was for me to help her ritualize. It was this non-negotiable third option that she was desperate for and pleaded for. I did not want her to suffer, but I continued to hold that line. She became angry with me, but I continued to hold that line. I wasn’t sure how it would all work out, but I continued to hold that line.

Fortunately, my client decided she would try to fight her OCD with me. We cried, and we laughed as we got through it (without any soul-sucking rituals!!!).  As she shared how much stronger and in control she felt as a result of what she had accomplished, I was forever grateful for our shared sense of strength as well as for the trusted process of the ERP work we do.

We are all stronger than we know and always stronger together.