Unreasonable fears

[MistyKay74]

My 16 year old daughter was diagnosed with ocd, depression and anxiety. She has dropped her previous typical obsession with washing, etc. Yet her obsessions keep changing. As soon as she overcomes one fear, she starts a new one.
The last two weeks she has been tormented by this fear that part of her brain is closing up. She spends all her energy and time "trying" to keep her brain open. The effort is exhausting and causes her to be so stressed out that she's tired, has headaches and cannot enjoy anything. While she does not show any outward compulsions, her fears drive her to great efforts mentally to protect herself. She feels she must focus on this at all times and use self talk, trying to keep her brain open, or else it will close automatically.  
She knows it's not true but she cannot resist the fear. She asks me every few minutes for reassurance that her brain is ok. She asks me, "if I stop thinking about it, will my brain just open up again?" I helped her look it up on the internet to show her that this condition does not exist, it is a false fear. She believes me for a minute but then forgets the logic as the fear overtakes her. She desperately wants to be free of this and I have tried to be as reassuring as possible. But her battle is all in her mind therefore I cannot focus on behavior therapy as one would do for a typical fear of germs type of fear.
I live in Taiwan and do not have access to a good therapist. Do you have any advice???

[kayla1492]

yes though my advice isnt one of a doctor i think that if she reads if she leaves the fears behind and absoarbs herself into books that the fears will go away. but if it dosnt then have her write. write all her feelings..im sorry im not a specialist but it sounds to me that she has to keep herself busy to stay away from the fears. i hope my advice helps. but from your post it seems that thismay be a battle that she has toovercome herself. she has to have the will power to overcome it. hopefully theamount of love you have for her will help. i wish u both luck!

[ggreg]

I might add that since a therapist is not available to you, that there is an approach to fear-based obsessions called "exposure therapy," where a person has to face their fears, little by little, until they can "stand in their fear."  For example, people who wash their hands all day, as your daughter did at one time, they are to not wash their hands for a whole day and once they see it will not kill them, it is reassuring, and this therapy goes right on up to putting their hands in filthy public trash and then not washing them for the rest of the day.  So, it stands to reason if your daughter is afraid her mind will close up if she doesn't keep thinking about it and talking about it, then perhaps have her work on a simple puzzle that can be solved within a certain length of time.  Have her sit down and work on that puzzle and you time her.  She must get her times down as far as possible.  This will keep her from all these distracting thoughts.  When she sees her mind didn't close down while she was doing the puzzle, she'll start to reorient her thoughts and the fear will dissipate.  I imagine you can come up with other ways to occupy her mind so she will eventually realize that her brain won't shut down just because she's not thinking about it.

Try to get her into some demanding physical activities, and fun activities like introducing her to art lessons and a musical instrument, like the guitar.  Have her go through the library and pick out books that she likes from the nonfiction section, like on dogs or home design picture books, or from fiction best sellers.  And whenever she gets all worked up over something she fears, demonstrate to her how to counteract her nerves by deep breathing techniques, which is to breathe in very deeply, blow it out, breathe normal a few times, then breathe deeply again, do this ten times, and it'll lower her heartrate and thus her anxiety.  Get her outside as much as you can, walking, horseback riding, tennis, hiking down trails, boating on the water, nature has a way of soothing a person.

I don't know what medicine she is on, but SOME doc needs to prescribe her anti-anxiety drugs, to calm her down so she won't care so much about the details, and it will also prevent her from feeling so much fear, like tranquilizers are helpful with people who have uncontrolled anxiety over nothing.  And you might ask the doc to draw blood and see what her vitamin and mineral numbers look like, make sure she's not deficient in anything.

[rod44]

CBT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the best treatment for OCD.

The thoughts are her rituals.....Intense anxiety and even panic can come whenever she attempts to stop the ritual.  The tension and anxiety build to such an intense degree that she surrenders once again to the thoughts. explain that the thoughts are just that....thoughts....her fear is NOT fact .... but a thought, her fear cannot hurt her. It is not the thought that is the problem, her fear will change every few days/weeks. Getting her to recognize her fear and how to live with it is the key here......This is where CBT comes in.

going on the net and indulging her is not helping.