Here’s what the parents of a college aged OCD sufferer recently told me:

“We took him to see a psychologist for anxiety when he was in eighth grade, and I think this caused some degree of anxiety and shame and so he just hid his OCD from everyone from them on. And he did a very good job of it from eighth grade until college, when he finally hit rock bottom. We had no idea of what had been going on in his head for the past 5 or 6 years.

After he finally got residential treatment for his OCD and came home on a school vacation, we were like mother hen’s for the first few months. Any time he wasn’t around us we worried that he was disappearing to do his rituals. Even now, he often doesn’t take our phone calls at college because he feels like we are checking up on him. And we are checking up on him, so it does create tension between him and us. When we don’t get returns of texts and emails then we immediately think the worst. I don’t know why we worry because he doesn’t exhibit a reason to worry, and he seems totally in control. But when you’ve a had a child go through this its hard, and you are watching them like a hawk” .

Please share your own comments about your experiences in dealing with your own family members’ OCD.