OCD Educate me on ocd?

[NicG]

Hey guys,
So my T is starting to think my mum might have some form of OCD. Maybe. My whole life she's stressed over the tiniest little things WAY too much (for example, which way the towels go in the linen cupboard) and I've always felt like I can't live up to her standards. Whenever I go away for more than a day or two, I come home and she's reorganised my entire bedroom (I'm 21, and this makes me feel somewhat violated). I mentioned this and a couple of other things she freaks out over and my T thought maybe it's a possibility.

I'll be the first to admit I know next to nothing about OCD, so I have a few questions for anyone who suffers or supports a sufferer (not saying I'm entirely sure she has OCD, but my T says she at least shows some symptoms of it):
What kind of expectations can I have of how she should treat me? Eg if my room is messier than she can deal with, every day kind of things like that
How can I best treat HER with love, within reason?
What do I do when she's freaking out? Can I calm her down? My usual strategy is to run away because her yelling is SCARY

Thanks everyone :)

 

[Deleted member 28812]

Best ask your therapist... but here is what I would do. Tell her "I know that this must feel scary to you but I want my room to be like this and it's going to stay like this" and tell her yelling at you is completly unacceptable.

Here is about how I solved a conflict when nagged about the trash, which had to do with him annoyed by something that happened at his workplace but also by OCD: https://www.myptsd.com/threads/solved-a-conflict.51739/

My husband has OCD and sometimes he has a point. I talked about this in another thread prior propper planing prevents piss poor performance or to put it another way piss poor planing promotes piss poor performance.

It is good to know where you can find things and have them in good working order and it's not lik OCD sufferers are nuts. Some of the things they think make a lot of sense if you try to see them from their perspective...

But they like to obsess over scary thoughts like... what if I there is a scray germ on that unclean towel?... and now it's on my hands... and the children will be infected as soon as I touch them and die.

It makes no sense to tell an OCD sufferer not to be afraid. He is afraid what he must learn is to feel the fear and do it anyway and slowly and gradually learn that there is no reason to be afraid.

@anthony is a therapist and may be he can tell me if I explained this correctly. @holdenmonty has some obsessive thoughts and maybe he can help.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

OCD suffers do not show obsessive behaviour "just because". They typically have a fear attached to it like "what if I run out of gazoline in the middle of nowhere? So I must check that there is always enough gazoline", "What if I forget about important information? So I need a checklist", "What if I cannot find my things when I need them? So I need to have them always in the same place", "What if I am to sloppy in washing my hands and have dangerous germs on them? So I need to wash them always the same way".

OCD is an anxiety disease.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I thought Anthony was still in training? Did I miss something?

 

[sun seeker]

It sounds to me as though, whatever your mother's condition, there are some boundary issues going on that I hope you can sort out.

I had posted here about my own experience, but then changed my mind. Sorry, I'm having a weird day.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

@Solara: Is he? Oh, okay. Then I got this wrong. :)