Tips to deal with extreme anxiety/OCPD of a HFA teenager.

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Dear All,

We have a 14+ year old son who was diagnosed as PDDNOS/ADD at 3 and is going thru special education system of the public school. As the kid is growing up new issues are coming up. A lot of anxiety and OCPD (more than OCD). The kid has one strange behavior. Please provide any tips if you have come across this one.

Kid owns few video games etc. Even if there is a scratch on it then he asks us to repair it or get new ones. Asks for games DVD replacement even if the cover is a bit torn. We did get few things as replacement during last few weeks. Now the anxiety/OCPD is so much that he has not even opened those. Now he thinks he will read all the manuals (which is not happening due to his extremely poor comprehension), then will use/open the consoles/games we got around Christmas.
Also is very possessive of papers. If any paper he owns gets a bit folded, raises the hell.

Tried two professionals for psycho therapy but were not helpful for dealing with FSA/Anxiety/OCPD issues. Started with third professional last week. Keeping fingers crossed.

Please share any tips/pointers you have to deal with such issues.
TIA, Raky

Raky, this sounds a lot like my son, only a bit more extreme. We bought him a copy of "What to Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck" and it helped him a great deal.

I'm no professional, but to me this behavior sounds like it is walking the line between an obsessive-compulsive behavior and garden-variety autistic rigidity (albeit extreme.) It took a lot of time and therapy for my own son to learn that everything does not need to be "perfect." In fact, we changed the phrase "Practice makes Perfect" to "Practice makes Improvement" for him, because the idea of perfection was so upsetting.

My son was totally unable to play games where there was any kind of competition or luck, because he could not stand the idea of an uncertain outcome. It was a real handicap, and truthfully I'm not sure how we got over it: I think mostly by really working on his other deficits which were causing a lot of anxiety (pragmatic speech and social skills) and making sure his environment at school was as comfortable as possible (gets to go in before all the other kids, has an assigned place in line, etc.) He was gradually able to start hearing the advice of the book and to implement it.

Now, whenever he gets stuck in a perfectionistic rut, I just remind him that perfection is a "garbage" thought he needs to throw away, and usually he calms down.

Good luck!

One of my sons exhibits similar behaviours, with a great deal of anxiety over harm coming to his belongings, trying desperately to keep them absolutely pristine and freaking out over minor or imagined damage. He does the same with papers too (except for school papers, funnily enough those can get completely rumpled at the bottom of his school bag and he couldn't care less!). Unfortunately I don't have a fix for the problem. We are working with a therapist, and it is a slow ongoing process.

Two things that have helped:
1. The book "Freeing Your Child From Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" by Dr. Tamar Chansky. It is excellent. I was actually just thinking of getting it out for a reread.

2. Designating certain belongings as family belongings and certain belongings as just his. For instance video games and most books are family belongings, which means they get opened and read or played. They are not supposed to stay perfect. He is not responsible for keeping them perfect. It is OK for them to accumulate normal wear and tear. It is OK for everyone to touch and use them. Mom and Dad decide the rules about their use (as in we don't let DS dictate how and when they can be touched or if they must be replaced). For his belongings, he keeps them in his room. No one else touches or so much as looks at them, and he is allowed to keep them exactly how he wants. If he decides one of his belongings has been "ruined" due to minor damage, he can replace it with his own allowance.

Good luck. These OCD behaviours can be so challenging!