My mom stares straight forward as she drives, lips pressed firmly shut. It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to recognize that she’s angry with me. The next 30 minutes will be spent in silence as she seethes. “Isn’t it ironic,” I think, “that she walks out of a therapy session, which is supposed to help her deal with her emotions, feeling so furious?”
My mom doesn’t like talking about her OCD. When she was first diagnosed, she refused to go to therapy. She was innately suspicious of doctors and medications because they were trying to “fix” her. She didn’t need to be fixed; she felt whole. While her family continued to insist that the OCD was a debilitating mental illness, she felt the very thing that was altering her brain was a part of her personality she could not live without. However, when she was threatened with a call to the Department of Children and Family Services, she finally realized there was no other option but therapy. And so, knowing my entire family needed real change, I went with her.
To be honest, I didn’t want to go. I was angry at my mom. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t let any of my friends inside the house; I didn’t understand why I had to shower the instant I came home every day; and I didn’t understand why I had to follow what seemed like endless rules to keep everything not just clean, but unrealistically free of germs. Therapy presented itself as an almost magical option, something to correct all the wrongs in my life.
Spoiler alert: Therapy isn’t magic, and change isn’t easily accomplished. It takes an incomprehensible amount of work, especially when you are trying to remedy what you have no control over. As I listened to the therapist talk my mom through each obstacle she encountered, I began to realize what my mom really needed. She didn’t appreciate somebody calling out her faults and expecting her to fix them with the blink of an eye—and who would? My mom wanted somebody to be there with her, to walk each step with her, to witness her pain and reward her progress, and to recognize that while she would never be perfect, it wasn’t because she didn’t try.
Some things can only be taught through experience. A textbook can’t teach you how to handle the day-to-day struggles inherent in helping a family member cope with a mental illness. But I’ve lived through it, and I can tell you that it comes down to one thing: Empathy. Because of empathy, when my mom washes her hands repeatedly, yells at me for touching something “dirty”, or asks me to get yet another squirt of Purell, I try to understand the irresistible urges she undergoes, and separate her OCD from the person I know she is. By showing my support, I let her know she doesn’t have to fight the monster that is OCD on her own.
My mom doesn’t give me the silent treatment anymore. Actually, she decided to start taking medication for her OCD two months ago — on the condition that I would be there for her, holding her hand through the entire process; and, of course, I will. She can depend on me.