New member

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

I am a new member and looking for advice. Our daughter is 8years old and has

OCD. We live in the UK. Our daughter started to display symptoms over a year

and a half ago when we changed schools. We took her to the GP who reffered her

to our Local Child and Adolecent health services, because this was through the

NHS we realised this was going to take along time, so paid for some sessions

privately in the mean time. After the private sessions she showed good progress

and after starting a new academic year with new teachers the OCD practically

disappeared. Eventually the NHS appointments came through and we debated what

to do, in hindsight we should have left it there, but at the time thought we

could only add to our knoweldge of how to manage Olivia's OCD. This however

brought back her fears and OCD and after a few sessions they discharged us.

However Olivia is still scarred, we can manage the day time fears and have been

doing the exposure techniques, but we have one issue that is very hard to manage

and would appreciate some advice.

Olivia fears that her hair will fall out, she has to say " , ,

" before she goes to sleep, everytime the instrusive thought of her hair

falling out enters her head, this can go on for hours, and we have been up and

down the stairs alot at night, with Olivia scared and hysterical, this natrually

has a knock on effect during the days because she is lacking sleep.

Historically Olivia has been very scarred to go to sleep and we have had

terrible problems with separation anxiety at night.

I am wondering what technique to use to manage her intrusvie thoughts. The

pychologist we saw strongly felt that we should not engage with her at night but

Olivia will not try exposure techniques on her own at night (understanably).

The problem is also because this is largely in her head, so difficult to check.

Any ideas would be gratefully received.