How to Help a Family Member with OCD & Anxiety

How to Help a Family Member with OCD & Anxiety

https://www.restoredminds.com/5-Rules-For-Recovery

https://www.restoredminds.com/ocd-assessment

What can I do to help a family member who is struggling with OCD & Anxiety?

This is a question I am faced with at least a dozen times per week. Often from a person who is in a great deal of pain because someone they care about deeply is struggling with their mental health. 

Friends, it is so important to remember that your family and loved ones are often your greater resource on your journey to recovery. And in so many cases these resources are overlooked and often underutilized simply because they don’t know how to help you. And how could they? They have never been taught. 

That is why in today’s episode, we are going to focus on friends and family members of people who struggle with OCD & Anxiety and introduce some specific strategies they can use to support people they care about.

And if you are the person who is struggling, please send this to someone close to you so they know how to better support you. Remember, with the RIGHT TOOLS and PROPER SUPPORT, you can break out of the loop and start taking back control of their life.

Enjoy!

TRANSCRIPT

(00:12):

All right. Hello

(00:13):

And welcome to another episode of the restored mind show. My name is Matt Codde. And on this episode, I want to talk about how to help a family member or loved one. Who's struggling with OCD and anxiety. And so, um, in the, in this particular episode, I want to talk about five things really that, um, you can start to focus on as the loved one and the, the family member, right? Because, you know, the reality is, is if your, if your loved one, struggling with OCD and anxiety, and they're struggling in a, in a pretty severe way, one of the people who usually catch it the worst as you, you know, because oftentimes your whole life becomes consumed with trying to help them. Right. And, and this might include things like, you know, trying to help them avoid things that might trigger, you know, you're trying to prep things, so they don't get triggered over certain events or, you know, the, or you become their reassurance.

(01:07):

Right. And you're just always answering the same questions day after day after day. And again, it's exhausting and it ultimately leads to a lot of frustration and ultimately resentment, right. Which is why I wanted to, to make this episode here, because, you know, I, I've watched firsthand, you know, um, OCD and anxiety, really rip families and relationships apart, you know, because eventually it becomes unsustainable. Right. And that's why I'm in this episode, I want to talk about kind of five things that you can do to help a family member or loved one with OCD and anxiety. And again, when I'm talking about helping, I'm talking about helping them over the long-term right. And it's very important distinction because I'm not talking about helping them feel comfortable today. I'm talking about helping them heal over time. And just to make that quick distinction. So let's talk about number one.

(01:55):

So, um, number one is really understanding the loop, right? And when I talk about the loop, I'm talking about the four kind of key components that keep people in, in anxiety and OCD loop, right? So you have the thoughts that they're experiencing, right? That's number one you have, um, number two is the anxiety or the discomfort, the uncomfortable feelings that they're experiencing. Number three are the behaviors that they're engaging in that ultimately number four, produce relief, right? So there's those four components. You have the thoughts, the feelings, the behaviors in the relief, and this operates in a loop that grows and grows over time. Now this could be things such as, you know, again, thoughts about contamination, let's say, right? And then that produces anxiety. The behaviors would be cleaning, right. That provide relief, and then it grows, right. Another example could be, let's say, uh, you know, a specific phobia, right?

(02:44):

Let's say there's a phobia of, of, I don't know, mold or something like that in the house. Right. So the, the, you know, the, um, the behavior in this case could be cleaning or asking reassurance, right. Or, you know, intrusive thoughts that are happening and that produces anxiety. And then the, um, behavior could be things like avoidance, you know, all sorts of stuff, right. Avoidance. So when we summarize kind of the behaviors, it's really anything the person is doing to check control, avoid, or reassure, and they can be doing these behaviors physically and mentally. Right. And so, um, so when we understand that loop though, then what we need to understand is how to, how to treat that loop. How do we break the loop? And this is the number one thing is that most people focus on the complete wrong thing. When it comes to treating OCD and anxiety, they focus on the thoughts and they focus on the feelings, but the problem is you don't have control over those things.

(03:35):

And so that's where most of the frustration ends up really building, right. Is that we're trying to control something that can't be controlled. And in this, from the person who's dealing with anxiety and the family member, right. Like we can't control, let alone our own thoughts and feelings, let alone someone else's. Right. So, um, the, the second thing becomes focusing on the right thing. And that's really, when we understand treatment, we understand that the only thing that we really have focus on or that we really have control over is behavior. Right. And so when we, when we focus on the right thing and focus on, you know, seeing this as a behavioral problem, right. And really starting to eliminate the behaviors that are reinforcing the fear, you know, such as the avoidant behaviors, the reassurance, the checking, the controlling, the mental rumination, the analyzing, right.

(04:24):

All of that stuff that we do, that is actually our goal to eliminate that. So, and then that's the whole, you know, um, that's the whole process of exposure, response prevention, right. That's the entire method, right. To really summarize. And then, um, so when we talk about, you know, once we focus on that, then we have to understand your role, right. And then when I, when I talk about understanding your role, we're talking about, Hey, understanding your role becomes, what are you doing that is eliminating that, that, uh, anxiety or distress temporarily, is there a way that you're, you know, ultimately reinforcing this cycle and actually keeping the cycle going as the loved one, as the parent, as a family member, are you offering reassurance, are you offering, um, you know, are you offering just, you know, constant avoidance, right. Are you allowing that avoidance to happen?

(05:20):

Are you, um, accommodating this in any way? And when we understand your role in this, that's when we can start to change our role. Right. And again, because again, the goal is for long-term long-term mental health, right. Long-term success, not short-term comfort. Okay. So, um, when it, when it comes to understanding your role in the loop, right, then we can start to make changes there. Now it doesn't mean that you should just go and cut off anything you do right away without telling the individual. Right. Because again, part of this is about education, right. We really want to, uh, you know, educate ourselves right. And educate our loved ones on the problem as a whole and how yeah. Treat the problem. Right. And that really where, you know, working together and seeing this as a problem that we're facing together yeah. Is so important. Um, but really if we start focusing on the, on the right thing and really understanding our role on it, then we can start to have some real honest discussions with our loved ones and our families, and set clear boundaries on, Hey, what's acceptable.

(06:21):

What's not right. And, and ultimately, um, you know, allow the, the individual to determine the best path and we can determine the best path with them. Right. We can work together. And I say, okay, Hey look, what, what can I really do to help? I hope this into like, to help my loved one. Right? And if there's accommodation behaviors that I'm engaging in, we got to understand that that's making them worse over the long run. Right. So anything I'm doing to help them avoid or to reassure them, or, you know, to anything, if I'm like cleaning a bunch of stuff for them, so they don't get anxious. I need, we need to realize that, like that is actually making them worse over the long run. I know it makes them better. And they tell you that they want you to do this stuff, um, in the short term, but over the longterm, that's making things worse, that's building and reinforcing the loop.

(07:09):

So that's what we need to have some honest discussions. And that's number four. Right? Real brutal, honest discussion sometimes on saying, Hey look, just because we've been doing something a certain way for several weeks or months, or even years or decades, even if we understand that that's making the person worse. Okay. In the long run, we shouldn't keep doing it just because you've been doing something for a long time. Doesn't mean it was right. So part of the educator Asian process is really understanding, Hey, how, what am I doing? That's accommodating this, what am I doing this, reinforcing this? And if, if there is something we need to start removing them, right. And that's number five, right. Is to stop accommodating, stop, you know, reinforcing stop, ultimately growing the fear. Bye bye. Pressing short-term feelings, right. That's really one of the big problems with OCD and anxiety is we focus so much on these short-term feelings and neutralizing them and neutralizing them.

(08:04):

Right. But eventually it just grows and grows and grows, grows and begins, controlling our lives and the lives of our loved ones until eventually we're just spending all day doing reinforcing behaviors and accommodating behaviors. And again, like I said, the problem with that is, is that eventually it leads to things like resentment and it leads to breaking apart relationships to the point where sometimes they're they're hurt beyond repair. Right? And so when we talk about helping a family member and loved one with OCD and anxiety, we need to think in the longterm always, okay. Not the short term. And when we like with these five things, right. When we understand the loop, when we focus on the right thing, we understand our role. We have honest discussions with the individual about the changes that need to be made. And finally, when we stop our accommodating behaviors, that's how you can really help them over the long-term.

(08:54):

But again, they need to be in this as well. Like this needs to be something that we all understand we're doing together. So hopefully this makes sense. As far as like these, these five things, as things that you can start doing and ways that you can start doing now, again, at restorative minds, we have, um, additional trainings and further education materials, as well as supports, um, support groups, you know, live calls that we can help you with this as well. So if that's something you're interested in, you know, please look at the links down below, um, because you know, we have a bunch of resources available to help you with this because I understand it's not that easy, but these are things that really need to be done if you, uh, if you want to be successful with this. So thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us today. And I hope this was helpful. And again, check out those links and be sure to subscribe and follow us as well. We always appreciate your support. So thank you and hope you guys have a wonderful week. Talk to you soon.