Abstract
This chapter explores embodied expressions and practices of ambiguity, idiosyncrasy, and responsiveness that can be cultivated through the sometimes-excruciating twists and turns of the adventure of mothering a child deeply tangled up with anxiety. In order to surface these practices we will attend closely to the embodied realities of OCD as well as to some of the distinctive embodied features of motherhood.
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Notes
- 1.
John S. March MD, MPH and Christine M. Benton, Talking Back to OCD: The Program That Helps Kids and Teens Say “No Way”—and Parents Say “Way to Go.” (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 91–92.
- 2.
Ibid., 29, 31, 54–56.
- 3.
His vocation then meant we were often moving and the worked long hours and was not home to be an equal parent. We have since made even more vocational adjustments for my husband to have a change in career as well.
- 4.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with exposures has proven to be highly successful for kids with OCD. It is a combination of behavior therapy (people are taught how to change behaviors as a way of changing thoughts and feelings) that focuses on “exposure and response prevention” as the main thoroughfare into the intrusive thoughts. Exposures create controlled situations in which people come face to face with their fear and prove to themselves that they can get through whatever it is. For example, the fear of falling out a window would be addressed in a controlled setting by stages of exposures—standing close to the window when it is closed, then another exposure may include opening the window. Cognitive therapy focuses on changing thought patterns by training our brains to reframe our thinking. For example, when my son’s OCD tells him he has to do what it says, he answers back with “I am in control. You can’t tell me what to do.” March, Talking Back to OCD, 61–62, 68–71.
- 5.
The term “anxiety disorder” is complicated by a few things. First, I am reluctant do use this label even as I recognize it is the most precise and translatable way for me to signal the particularities of mothering that I am surfacing here. I discuss this conundrum later in this chapter. Also, OCD has long been classified as an anxiety disorder, but recently it has been reclassified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - V (DSM-V) as its own category and cluster of disorders.
American Psychiatric Association, “DSM-5 Development”, accessed September 24, 2016, http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Obsessive%20Compulsive%20Disorders%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf.
- 6.
In my book, Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), I described the “embodied styles of existence” suggested by motherhood. “These styles of existence are fashioned by the distinctive and embodied characteristics of ambiguity” (95). Motherhood does not signal a static essence, an ideal, or a particular set of practices (94).
- 7.
Mount Shoop, “Embodying Theology,” 235, 242.
- 8.
Through the years we have considered private schools of different sorts (Montessori, Waldorf, Quaker, and combinations of them all) and not felt these settings would help him in some other ways. I have never seriously considered home-schooling mostly because I recognize my own limitations and my own need for some space to refuel.
- 9.
March and Benton, Talking Back to OCD, 19.
- 10.
Fatima Tipu, “OCD Is Not A Quirk,” The Atlantic Magazine, February 22, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/ocd-is-a-disorder-not-a-quirk/385562/.
- 11.
Prakash Kamath, Y.C. Janardhan Reddy, and Thennarasu Kandavel, “Suicidal Behavior in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,” The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 68, no. 11 (November 2007): 1741–1750.
- 12.
Mount Shoop, Let the Bones Dance.
- 13.
Our school strategies for our son have gotten progressively more formal and legalistic as teachers have resisted the simple interventions he needs. We went from a Student Support Team (SST), to an Intervention Plan (RtI), to a 504, and an Individual Education Plan (IEP).
- 14.
There are several “sub-types” as identified by the guild of Western psychology: washing, checking, ordering (symmetry), counting/repeating, scrupulosity, and hoarding. March and Benton, Talking Back to OCD, 30.
- 15.
Ibid., 10.
- 16.
Ibid., 32.
- 17.
National Institute of Mental Health, “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Among Adults,” https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-among-adults.shtml.
- 18.
“People with severe OCD are imprisoned by intrusive thoughts or compulsive actions that can take hours out of each day” according to Susanne Ahmari, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist. Mark Roth/ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Severe OCD Has Significant Consequences,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, accessed September 24, 2016, http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2015/02/01/Severe-OCD-has-significant-consequences/stories/201502010007.
- 19.
March and Benton, Talking Back to OCD, 29.
- 20.
Ibid., 37.
- 21.
Ibid., 53.
- 22.
These kinds of “moral fears” are common with some sub-types of OCD, especially in adolescents and teenagers. Research indicates that OCD patients do not act on these thoughts. On the contrary, OCD patients are less prone to violent behavior than the general population. Other forms of mental illness, like psychosis, show linkages between violent thoughts and violent behavior. OCD shows us the opposite tendency. If only this truth could provide some ease for all those who fear what they might become who suffer from OCD.
References
American Psychiatric Association, “DSM-5 Development”, accessed September 24, 2016, http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Obsessive%20Compulsive%20Disorders%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf.
Holmes, Emily A., and Wendy Farley, eds. Women, Writing, Theology: Transforming a Tradition of Exclusion. Waco, Tex: Baylor University Press, 2011.
Kamath, Prakash, Y. C. Janardhan Reddy, and Thennarasu Kandavel. “Suicidal Behavior in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 68, no. 11 (November 2007): 1741–50.
March, John S., MD, MPH, and Christine M. Benton. Talking Back to OCD: The Program That Helps Kids and Teens Say “No Way”—and Parents Say “Way to Go.” 1 edition. New York: The Guilford Press, 2006.
Mount Shoop, Marcia W. Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.
“Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Among Adults.” Accessed September 24, 2016. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-among-adults.shtml.
Roth, Mark. “Severe OCD Has Significant Consequences.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Accessed September 24, 2016. http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2015/02/01/Severe-OCD-has-significant-consequences/stories/201502010007.
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Mount Shoop, M.W. (2017). Oceans of Love and Turbulent Seas: Mothering an Anxious Child and the Spirituality of Ambiguity. In: Bischoff, C., O’Donnell Gandolfo, E., Hardison-Moody, A. (eds) Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59653-2_11
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