OCD Workshops for Parents at the Child Mind Institute in New York City

The Child Mind Institute let me know that they are offering a series of workshops for parents of children with OCD, with the last three being in January, February and March, 2012. All of the workshops in the series are free and open to the public. Here's a description of their mission:

Our Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Parent Support and Information Group workshop series covers a range of issues affecting children with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and their support networks, from navigating friendships and family gatherings to the ins and outs of treatment and medication. This program is an opportunity to gain invaluable skills and learn how to help your children take control of their condition and thrive. Below you'll find the dates and topics of the 2011-2012 workshops; descriptions to follow.
This series is brought to you by the Child Mind Institute's Intensive Pediatric OCD Program. All workshops are held at the Child Mind Institute headquarters located at 445 Park Avenue (with entrance on 56th Street), New York, NY 10022.
The Nuts and Bolts of Exposure Therapy
Speaker: Jerry Bubrick, PhD, Senior Director, Anxiety & Mood Disorders Center; Director, Intensive Pediatric OCD Program
Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Time: 6:00PM - 7:30PM
Location: Fascitelli Board Room at the Child Mind Institute
At first glance, the treatment for a child with OCD can seem illogical and difficult—why would my child want to do exactly what she fears? In this workshop, Jerry Bubrick, PhD, Senior Director of the Anxiety & Mood Disorders Center and Director of the Child Mind Institute's Intensive Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders Program explains why exposure therapy is the gold standard in OCD treatment and how it works to alleviate the extreme anxiety a child experiences around his or her symptoms. He explains how to help your child face the "bully in the brain" head-on and regain control over his or her life.
Is Medication Part of the Answer? Medication Approaches to OCD
Speaker: Roy Boorady, MD, Senior Director of the Child Mind Institute's Psychopharmacology Center
Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Time: 6:00PM - 7:30PM
Location: Fascitelli Board Room
When deciding how to best treat a child with OCD, it is important to be aware of all of the options. Treatment for children with OCD will often involve cognitive-behavioral therapy, medication, or a combination of the two. Roy Boorady, MD, Senior Director of the Child Mind Institute's Psychopharmacology Center and one of the nation's foremost experts in the psychopharmacological treatment of children and teens, discusses medication approaches to treating OCD. You'll gain a deeper understanding of when and how medication should be used in the treatment of OCD as well as the benefits and drawbacks of the different classes of medication available.
Real Stories: Parents Speak
Date: Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Time: 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Location: Fascitelli Board Room at the Child Mind Institute
Join us for a very special Q&A panel of parents who've successfully led their children through the challenges of OCD. They will share personal stories—their struggles as well as the successes—of raising a child with OCD. You'll have the opportunity to ask questions and gain insight into how you can help your child while maintaining balance in your life.

Finding OCD Support Groups

The International OCD Foundation's new list of support groups is now live! I had started a list of OCD support groups for adults in the US and Canada when the IOCDF's page was under construction. I am going to leave it up for now, but I encourage readers to go to the IOCDF's support group page. You can search by location or alphabetically.

If there isn't a group in your area, there is a link to a manual by Dr. Jonathan Grayson on how to start your own GOAL group. The support group I've attended is modeled on the GOAL group structure of having a time of sharing followed by making a concrete goal for an exposure to do before the next group meeting. It was very helpful to have accountability and support from other people who understood what it's like to have OCD.

Going Back to My OCD Support Group

I happened to cross paths with someone from the OCD Support Group I used to attend, and she invited me to come back as I told her about having difficulty with a lot of unstructured time since being jobless. I went this week, and realized I hadn't been there in almost 2 years.

I like the immense practicality of this group. After a discussion, we get into smaller groups, each with a seasoned member to lead, and each person picks a goal for the next 2 weeks until the next meeting. The group can help generate ideas for exposures, which can be hard to do by yourself if you are feeling anxious and sucked into the compulsing.

The key is to choose a goal that you are willing to do, and it's like a secret weapon against OCD. The most innocuous sounding goals often lead to important change, like a catalyst setting off your own self-confidence and self-efficacy.

The defining questions for the goal are:

• What action will you do?
• When will you do it?
• How often will you do it?

OCD thrives on vagueness in goals, like "I'll try to obsess less." My perfectionistic OCD gets set off by the idea of small steps--the squawking voice demands "all or nothing at all" but that leads to being stuck in the OCD, because if I don't do a small step, I usually do nothing at all. My goal is to write some of the tasks I actually want to get done(as opposed to what my OCD wants, ie. reduction in anxiety at all costs)on index cards and once per day randomly pick a card and do the task. I've practiced avoidance for so long that it's quite an exposure to get something done, without ruminating on whether it's the right thing at the right time. The other goal I chose was to pick one day a week where I will delay getting on the computer until after noon, to give myself a chance to get other things done.

What small step can you choose to take this week?

Related:
Challenging OCD One Step At a Time
List of OCD Support Groups for Adults in the US

Challenging OCD One Step at a Time

The expression "Not seeing the forest for the trees" resonates with my experience of being in the OCD. I get lost in these trees, seeing every rock, every bit of moss, tiny insects, and getting cold and exhausted. I've been practicing the skill of taking an aerial view and seeing the forest of this disorder as a whole. Often I am disappointed when I catch a glimpse from the treetops, and my heart sinks, "Oh, no, I'm obessing again," but seeing that I'm obsessing can be the first step to challenging the OCD.

What do you do when you realize you are obsessing and doing compulsions? Often I condemn myself, feel angry at myself, feel despair, and most detrimental, assume I've already ruined the day, and that there is no hope of salvaging it. OCD thrives in black-and-white thinking. Either the day is perfect or it is ruined. Either I am challenging my OCD all the time, or I am a failure. And OCD fully exploits this by dismissing how humans really learn, which is by trial and error, bit by bit, and my anxiety rockets up, and I do even more compulsions trying to get the anxiety back down.

When it comes to challenging OCD, anything above zero is good. I'm serious about this. At times it's hard, because my progress seems so meager, and that's why going to a support group helps. Members of my group knew that if I lasted 5 minutes before researching a health symptom, this was a victory, because in the past I'd be searching before I even realized it and the day would be gone.

At times OCD seems like something from Grimm's Fairytales. OCD tells a tale of a happy ending if you just do whatever it demands. Of course the original stories by the Grimm brothers are full of violence, fear and destruction, not nearly what we imagine to be a "fairytale" in our era. One way I challenge my OCD is to ask,

Is it promising something I can't really have? Is it offering an illusion of a happy ending?

If I am honest with myself, the answer is yes. OCD is promising I can know things in advance, omnisciently, and perfectly, that I can know absolutely that I am making the right decision, that I can protect everyone I love completely, that I can make sure bad things never ever happen. The more I listen to the OCD, the longer I wander in the thicket.

Related Post:
Going Back to my OCD Support Group

Stuck in my Head

Yesterday I was driving with a couple bowling balls in my trunk, and every so often they would give a lurching jolt as they clanked together. It made me think of Jeff Bell's account of his "hit and run" anxiety--a constant fear that he had hit someone with his car and going back to check the road--and how the bowling balls could provide an Exposure to that fear, with their unannounced thumping, and practicing driving on without turning back to check the scene.

Until I read about this OCD theme, I didn't realize it existed. That is the challenge with OCD. It's a shapeshifter, and can take an infinite variety of forms. Sometimes in my support group it was difficult for people to relate to obsessions that weren't like their own. It's so much easier to come up with Exposures for anyone but ourselves!

But there are more commonalities than appear on the surface. When I have an unexplained body sensation or symptom, I immediately fear something is wrong. I want to know what caused it and why it's there, just as someone might hear an unexplained noise while driving, and be afraid they hit someone, and want to know what the noise was, and that it's not dangerous.

I think about potential contamination scenarios quite frequently since I work in a hospital, but the thoughts don't stick. My OCD doesn't latch onto this very often. It's not one of my major themes, and the temptation is to assume that my health fears are more realistic or more painful, or more likely to happen, and that's why I'm worried about them. Some people get a song stuck in their head and can't focus on anything else, and fear going crazy. The OCD amplifies something that happens all the time, and sticks tenaciously.

Recovery Inc., and Dr. Low's Wisdom for OCD Sufferers

A few years ago I came across the writings of Dr. Abraham Low, a psychiatrist who is a early forerunner of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. He created a self-help program called Recovery Inc., in 1937, to help mental patients reclaim peace of mind and their lives. I subscribed to Dr. Low's Wisdom, which mails a daily quote from one of his books. Sometimes he sounds very odd to my ears with his emphasis on complete trust in the physician, but he eloquently describes much of my experience with OCD, and advocates a form of Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy in his slogan "Doing the things you hate and fear to do."

I found an interesting blogger, Not A Saint--Just an Average Person, who describes his process of working through his anxieties and fears using Recovery, Inc.'s tools of identifying the thinking that leads to aggravation of symptoms.

I have not been to a Recovery, Inc. support group, but I know some people who have had a positive experience attending meetings. If there isn't an OCD support group in your area, consider looking into a RI group.

Support Groups for OCD: Finding my People

In 2007 I had the occasion to join an OCD GOAL group(Giving Obsessive Compulsives Another Lifestyle). A support group using the GOAL model usually has a therapist who helps keep the group focused, and when we break into small groups, any new people meet with the therapist for an introduction to OCD treatment. The format at my group:

1.	In large-group formation, discussion of some OCD-related topic selected by the Affiliate’s board. Each member present will be given an opportunity to share feelings and thoughts on this topic and may elect not to speak if he or she so wishes.
2.	In small-group formation, goal planning. Led by a recovering obsessive-compulsive, each small group will help each of its members formulate a specific and concrete goal whose accomplishment in the interval before the next support-group meeting will advance the member in the attempt to recover his or her life from obsessive-compulsive behavior. The taking on of this goal is voluntary.
3.	Socializing with refreshments.

The thought of attending a support group was second only to medication in terms of scariness in my mind! Especially the third part, socializing with refreshments, since I've had a battle with social anxiety. But the the chance to share my experiences with others who understood, and in turn to hear about their struggles and courage was extremely powerful, and the opportunity to choose a goal for the week of a concrete thing I could do to help fight my OCD was invaluable.

We had a phone and email contact list of members willing to be contacted during the week if you needed support for doing a particular exposure. Making an agreement to call someone before doing an exposure and and then after doing it allowed some members to accomplish tasks they never thought possible. I was still in the midst of my phone phobia, and didn't utilize phone contact very much, but the small group sessions increased the odds that I would find an goal for the week, and actually follow through.

Members showed incredible bravery in attending the meetings in spite of fears of driving there, or saying things imperfectly in front of others, or eating the snacks at break in spite of contamination fears, or admitting they had OCD, or being in a room full of strangers, or saying something that might harm someone else, or taking the slip of paper with the week's discussion question and answering without knowing for sure they really knew what the question meant.

I witnessed enough courage to know that it is possible to face OCD fears. If you think attending a support group sounds like an impossible task, remember that most of the people who come felt the same way. A good support group will encourage you to move forward, at whatever pace you can, and in the right direction.

One place to find a GOAL group is to contact a state affiliate of the International OCD Foundation. Some states have people working to start an affiliate, and are looking for interested folks. If you know of any other OCD support groups, let me know! I will post a list.

Related Pages:
International OCD Foundation Find a Support Group Database


Related Post:
Recovery Inc. Support Groups
Going Back to my OCD Support Group