Seeking help for my daughter

Hi everyone,

My oldest daughter was diagnosed with OCD at the age of 20, she is in her 30's now. See has seen a psychiatrist for it over the last five years because it has worsened. Her Prozac dose is up to 80 mg a day.

What she has noticed is, that over the last three months the week before her menstrual cycle she is experiencing severe symptoms of worry. It is scaring her.

Her OCD causes her to feel guilty/ responsible for everything that happens. She also worries that she may have said something wrong to someone and it bothers her for days. She is learning sign language and worries she signed wrong. Just a few of the latest examples.

Has anyone had symptoms worsen the week before a period? What type of therapist would work best for her? Could it be that her hormones are changing? I have so many questions.

I searched for professionals in our state but not sure what I'm looking for.

Any help or advice would be so much appreciated.

hi ConcernedMom!

it's nice to see parents so concerned about their children. not nice I mean, concern and worry can be painful, but your daughter is lucky to have a mother like you.

periods are a tricky time, especially for those with mental illnesses. my period intensifies my issues a lot, the hormones can really affect everything about us, including our mental issues. it's normal to feel an intensified form of OCD around your period and under stress. OCD can be tricky.

I've dealt (and continue to deal with) a lot of the same symptoms as your daughter. pathological guilt is a really common symptom of OCD and it's definitely really painful to deal with.

CBT would be the best for her. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy, it focuses on basically "rewiring" the brain to think in a normal way using healthy therapy techniques, worksheets, etc. it can be hard, your daughter will have to be willing to power through it, but it's extremely beneficial and the main treatment for OCD besides medication.

speaking of medication, is her medication working? do you know if it's working for her? if it's not, you should advise her to talk about it with her psychiatrist and see if it needs to be changed. I've been on prozac and meds are always different for everyone but I can't remember it really helping me much. that's just me though.

pm me if you need anything!

Thank you so much moodyblued for your reply. I suggested to my daughter that she may need to see a therapist that specializes in OCD.

She has been seeing her psychiatrist for about five years. She had her OCD under control until then. She was given Prozac 20mg. She goes every six months after her psychiatrist felt she was doing well and to get her new script.

She actually calls me after each visit to let me know how things went. I understand and have complete compassion for anyone dealing with anything mentally. So, she knows I will listen and support her. I also have many OCD tendencies and I'm ok with what I do the older I get.

As she is getting older her OCD gets worse around her period. Her psychiatrist ups it another 20mg each visit. She's up to the highest now 80mg and still when her period is about to start it's like it doesn't work.

She is lowering her caffeine intake. Maybe that might help a little. She keeps busy and exercises daily.

She knows I joined here to help her. Wish she would join but she's not comfortable with forums, I am. That's how I find things out.

She happens to be here with me this weekend. I read some stuff on here and a situation occurred this morning where she feels she hurt her brother. She didn't. I just reassured her that she didn't. She just cleaned his ears. I didn't tell her that in those words because I didn't want to belittle her concern. Just told her, he's a grown man who can say if you can clean them or not. He said yes, you cleaned them and that was it. It all about choices. You choose to do it and he choose to let you. No harm in it. She smiled and seemed to feel a little better. But, inside she's still worrying probably. Did I handle that right?

Thanks again for your help!

You're welcome!

does she feel better after her period is over?

as for the worry, I wouldn't advise reassuring her but i can understand why you did. she's your daughter and any pain she's in must hurt to see. when we ('we' meaning those of us with OCD) seek reassurance, we're performing a compulsion because it makes us feel better about our obsessive worry.

the more you reassure someone over very small things like that, it can get worse and worse. an easy way to handle this is to refuse to reassure her. you don't have to ignore her when she asks for reassurance by any means, this kind of technique is a lot easier with support and she'll need you to help her and sit with her while she's getting those anxiety, guilt and worry spikes.

when we do compulsions, it feeds into OCD and tells our brain that it's doing a good thing by making us anxious over insignificant or irrational things, if that makes sense? when we refuse to do the compulsions, it can come with an immense amount of anxiety and panic, but it's very temporary and it's advised that you sit through the spikes and allow the feeling to pass while practicing calming techniques. the more you resist compulsions, the less and less you feel the need to do them.

i would definitely talk to your daughter about doing this before you do it though, just so you can see how she would feel about trying it.

so, an example (since i feel like my words are a bit jumbled :L):
your daughter comes to you saying she's worried that she hurt her brother when she cleaned his ears. instead of telling her she did/didn't, a good thing to say is: "I don't think reassurance is going to help you so I'm not going to give it to you right now" and then try to sit with and comfort her until she calms down.

it's important to do this with her consent, and when it involves little irrational things like this. i wouldn't do this with bigger, more reasonable and important worries.

i would advise googling more about reassurance seeking since i don't think i explained​ all of this very well, but that's where you should start looking

Your words aren't jumbled. I understand what you're saying. So, basically me reassuring her is like I'm enabling her. Right?

It makes sense what you just said. Thanks again.

basically, yes

Forgot to mention that she does feel better after her period. That is what is concerning her.

that's kind of good to hear. i would really chalk it down to hormones making everything worse. if she uses cbt techniques during her period it might help with the OCD spike