I'm pretty sure that my son (stepson) has for real OCD. I took him to a therapist last week and we are going again next week.
We noticed when he was younger (10-ish) that he would wash his hands compulsively. We would ask him about it, and he would say, "I just don't want to get anyone sick," or some variation of that. He would wash so frequently that his knuckles would bleed. It was wild, and I had all sorts of warning bells going off, but my wife would talk him down from it. Sometimes there were identifiable triggers, but other times there was nothing going on at home at least that could explain what set him off. We were newly married, and I didn't have standing to throw any weight around with the kids at that point.
He's 17 now. He is one helluva baseball player. All-District last season, incredible baseball and physical stats. I've often thought that baseball is where he goes to escape from his OCD. The physical activity drowns out the noise for him. He is being recruited by several colleges. Since the recruitment thing began, he has been having A LOT of trouble. He is not a social kid, he has trouble talking to girls. His "trouble" takes the form of what he calls "thoughts". He will see a teammate, and he will have a sexual thought about him. It's not one teammate, it could be any of them. And then he will fixate on that thought. He might have a sexual thought about one of the family dogs, or fucking a shrub. I try not to laugh, but sometimes it's tough. And then he insists that he likes girls, and asks over and over if he is gay.
When he fixates, it might look like he is simply zoned out (this can be for an hour at a time). It might look like compulsive hand washing. It also might look like coming to my wife or me to "confess" the thought, and to get some sort of reassurance from us. These are all attempts at self-soothing, in my opinion. They have been so frequent for the past 6-8 months that it is causing us a lot of stress and anxiety. He mentioned not too long ago that he also had thoughts of harming himself, but those thoughts only happened after he had a friend commit suicide during Covid isolation.
There's a concept called "sublimation" that I ran across recently. It's when a person diverts an impulse into a more socially acceptable activity. I think that he has always sublimated his OCD thoughts into baseball. But now, with the stress of college recruiting, baseball itself has become stressful. So there's nothing to sublimate those thoughts into. He will get up to bat against dudes throwing in the 70s and strike out repeatedly. After games, he'll say that he was having "thoughts" and that he couldn't concentrate. Sometimes the thoughts come so rapidly that he seems almost manic to me. It will sound like this, but with machine gun speed:
"I was thinking about what it would be like if I <performed a sexual act> on that guy"
"Son, does that seem like a real thought to you? Would you do that?"
"NO! I like girls. Do you think I like girls?"
"Yes, son, I know that you do. That was a trash thought, and you should let it go."
"I ruined my game. I ruined this whole summer."
"No son, you didn't. It was one game. Do better next time out and keep working hard."
"Are you sure you think I like girls? I do like girls."
And on and on. He and I have talked about it. He says that it's not so easy to let the "thoughts" go. That they seem so real at the time. When he first started having the same-sex thoughts, we would tell him some variation of, "Son, it doesn't matter if you are gay. We love you all the same and nothing can ever change that". But that was NOT the answer he was looking for. That answer only made it seem to him like we were confirming his thoughts. I've since come to believe that he's not likely gay at all, and that his heterosexuality is the reason for his fixation on those thoughts. It's like a logic trap that he's set up for himself/us.
His thoughts are out of control. I don't think that the therapist we are going to is going to be the answer, long term. And his mother is dead-set against meds (she will do it as a last resort). The therapist is a friend of mine, though, and I know that my son will like him. It was so hard to talk him into going to see someone at all, and my hope is that my therapist friend can at least get him more comfortable in a therapy setting so that he can do the work that needs to be done going forward, even if it's with another therapist/specialist.
Years ago I heard a sermon in church. It's come back to me lately, and it goes like this:
There was a boy who was looking forward to the 4th of July. His family went and bought a bunch of fireworks. The boy was so looking forward to setting them off that he couldn't wait, and went in the backyard and lit one. It went off in his hand, and burned his arm terribly. And so the boy would go into the clinic to have his burned arm treated every few days. They would debride the wounds, and it was excruciating.
So finally one day the boy went into the clinic and held his wounded arm behind his back, instead holding up his other hand and exclaiming, "Look! It's HEALED! We don't have to do this anymore!" The kind doctor pulled him aside and knelt next to the boy. He said, gently, "I know that it hurts. But you have to understand. In order to be healed, you have to hold your wounded arm up."
I told my son that story after our first trip to the therapist. I've been through therapy a few times, and I know how easy it is to hide things there. My hope is that he opens up and lets people help him. I suppose I'm holding my wounded arm up here for you all to see, too. I'm worried about him. I love him. There's times when I think he's probably my best friend. I couldn't be prouder of him, I don't give a shit if he's a great baseball player, if he's gay or straight or whatever. He's my son and I want him to find a way to deal with this torment before it leads him down some dark path (which it surely will at some point).
I've read through a lot on here. I know that none of this holds a candle to what some of you have been through. Thanks for listening.