How ERP Therapy Can Help Your Child with OCD’s Issues Discussed in Therapy
Is your child with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) facing issues that they struggle to cope with? Your child experiencing OCD symptoms could be feeling scared because they feel like they have no control over their thoughts, and it can be difficult to understand.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy is an effective treatment for your child with OCD in a therapy setting. ERP can help your child face their fears and manage their worries.
What is ERP Therapy?
ERP therapy is an approach designed to help children, adults, and teens manage their symptoms of OCD. Its goal is to help children gradually face difficult or fearful situations without resorting to their compulsions, which is done in two key components called exposure and response prevention.
Through this process, your child can be taught about how their OCD thoughts work and are provided tools to help cope with these thoughts.
What Kind of Issues Your Child with OCD Faces:
It may be that you know well what kind of things your child struggles with daily, and a lot of these issues would be brought up in child therapy. Some things your child with OCD may struggle with are:
Recurring fears and worries your child does not want to have but cannot resist.
Repeated worries interfere with your child’s daily life and interactions with others.
Fears about hygiene or thoughts about violent and upsetting thoughts.
Needing to perform an action multiple times in a certain sequence, impacting the amount of time wasted in a day.
A lot of these issues are popular in children with OCD and are the main ones that would be focused on when your child comes in for an ERP therapy session.
What ERP Looks Like in Child Therapy:
When your child is in therapy for OCD, ERP techniques are used to help combat your child’s anxieties. OCD can feel frustrating for children, since they are aware of it but have no idea how to stop it. ERP starts with trying to help your child understand OCD and how it works. Then, your child will start to learn the tools of how to combat the worries and get more control over their compulsions.
Some common things your child with OCD may bring up in therapy are the lack of control, the difficulty in spending time with friends, feeling embarrassed or uncomfortable at school, and being confused about what is happening to them. These added stressors make it difficult for your child and can make it feel even more isolating. No child wants to feel left out or like they cannot enjoy things other kids their age enjoy. In child therapy, these topics are worked through, and using the ERP techniques provides your child with a sense of control and ways to ease some of these stressors to work toward a better quality of life.
If you feel that your child is struggling with various issues due to their OCD thoughts, there is help available to them.
Trying to cope with OCD as a child can be overwhelming and isolating, which is why we are here for you and your child every step of the way using ERP therapy. If learning about how ERP can help your child in therapy, please reach out to us.
