The SPACE Between: My Journey as a Child, Sibling, and Wife of Someone with OCD

Part 1

When someone in a family has OCD, they are not the only person affected. OCD impacts the entire family system – it demands accommodation from others and family members are in pain witnessing their loved one suffer at the hands of OCD.  I have lived in the ripple effect of OCD for my entire life. First as a child of someone with OCD, then a sibling of someone with OCD, and now as a wife of someone with OCD. While every individual’s story is different, this is mine. 

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I’ve known OCD for as long as I can remember – I just didn’t know its name. It made me late to school because we had to circle back home to check to make sure the garage door or anything that was locked in our home was closed more times than I can count. I learned to pay close attention to everything whenever we left home so I could try to convince my mom that we didn’t need to go back. I held onto the few hopeful memories when that trick worked, and I was able to help my mom feel less stressed. However, I also learned to sit with my feelings of frustration and hurt when my attempts to persuade her weren’t enough to pacify the constant need for certainty. 

I watched OCD run my mom ragged with constant worries about things that had already happened or things that had not yet occurred. As a child, the primary emotion I felt in this situation was frustration as I could not relate to my mom’s thought processes nor did it make sense to me. As I aged, my frustration morphed into helplessness – I was bigger (and a whole therapist!) but still no match for what was going on inside my mom’s mind.  Witnessing your parent suffer in a world that no amount of logic, arguing, or reassurance can sooth is deeply painful. 

When my family officially met OCD and learned its name, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, it felt like a watershed moment to me. Obsessions are intrusive, unwanted thoughts or worries that cause anxiety. These thoughts are outside of the person’s control and run in themes. Compulsions are actions or rituals done to ease the anxiety elicited by the obsession. Compulsions can be physical acts, or they can be occurring inside of a person’s mind. My mom’s fears of something bad happening to our family, causing harm, missing something, making mistakes, etc. were obsessions. Her need for certainty, over-apologizing, ruminating on the past, punishing self-talk, and checking to see if that stupid garage door was closed were compulsions. As the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place, an image of healing emerged. Learning about OCD not only helped me gain a deeper appreciation for what my mom was going through, but it also allowed me to separate OCD from my mom. My mom deeply cared about me being on time for school and trusted in what I saw with my own eyes (as it pertains to the garage door), but her OCD did not. In my experience, growing up with a parent that has OCD is challenging but not being able to separate your parent from their OCD due to lack of education and/or awareness is far worse. Knowing OCD’s name has allowed me a fresh perspective towards my relationship with my mom and has also given me a way to help support her because what I (and the rest of my family) had been doing was not working. 

I learned that I had been engaging in behaviors known as accommodations around my mom’s OCD for a long time as well. Accommodation behaviors are the any things done by loved ones to help the person with OCD feel better. Accommodation behaviors provide short-term relief but ultimately feed the OCD rather than support the person with OCD. My intense awareness of the garage door or locks, my reassurances that no one was upset with my mom, my attempts to logic and problem-solve around my mom’s fears were all versions of how I had been accommodating my mom’s OCD. I am thankful for treatments such as Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) that offer family members alternative ways to support someone with OCD even if that person is not ready to work on the OCD themselves. I learned that the best way I can support my mom is to encourage her to face her anxiety in the moment and not engage in accommodating behaviors. This is easier said than done, especially considering the different power dynamics and role reversal in the SPACE treatment as my parent is the person with OCD rather than the child struggling with OCD. I still make mistakes, but not accommodating OCD is what I can do to help my mom as an adult child (important to note that I was an adult before my family “officially” met OCD). 

I have found comfort in identifying ways I can help support my mom while also recognizing that I am not the primary agent of change. It can be easy to become upset with myself when I recognize that I am engaging in an accommodating behavior. At times I think to myself “you’re making the OCD worse” and while these thoughts are coming from a good place of wanting to help my mom - I am allowed to be a human and not Super Daughter. It is not my job to “fix” OCD for any person in my family nor is that a realistic expectation of anyone. I choose to give myself and my mom grace as we navigate through dealing with OCD. I choose to focus on the wins that I can see, no matter how small, and trust that there are wins happening internally that I am not privy to.  While I may have known my mom’s OCD for my entire life, I am hopeful to continue to get less familiar with OCD and more connected to my mom whom I love dearly.