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fear of swallowing chemicals/things/ocd


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just curious if anyone has a child with this type of ocd and if it goes away or how to handle it.....my daughter had this one time when she was 6 for about 2 months....and now has these thoughts again since the PANDAS "started" this year...any meds that could help? she is always scared she put something in her mouth (for example, she'll see a catepillar and ask if she put it in her mouth...she thought she swallowed wood chips today and had to start spitting...(they were no where near her mouth).

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Our DS has suffered a similar form of OCD. He had a fear of alcohol, and he began to fear that any drink in front of him . . . whether we prepared it for him, or we were at a restaurant, or even if he poured it for himself . . . somehow had alcohol in it. And that drinking it would be bad, less because it could harm him, but because "underage drinking is bad" (another form of OCD: scrupulosity).

 

These fears didn't go away on their own. He's taking abx, along with a low dose SSRI (Zoloft) and a low dose mood stabilizer/glutamate-modulating agent, lamictal. Even with all of that support, I don't think the fear would have entirely disipated on its own. We also met it (and continue to meet it) with exposure response prevention (ERP) therapy. Our DS is older than your DD, so the techniques would likely differ, but he created his own "loop tape" on his Iphone, recording his fear ("I'm afraid I'm going to accidentally drink alcohol.") and then listening to it over and over again until he felt less anxious at the thought itself.

 

It sounds as though your daughter is afraid of ingesting something dangerous or just all-out inedible; do you know if it's because she's afraid it will harm her, or if it's just that she knows it would be "wrong" to eat it, and she's afraid of doing something wrong? Once you've divined the real fear, then you or her therapist might be able to design some ERP exercises to meet that fear and help her "normalize" those outsized anxious feelings. I'm sorry I don't have any specific ideas for exercises on hand; I lack the depth of experience for dealing with different fears at different ages, to some degree. Perhaps someone else here will having something to add, but hopefully you have a good therapist on your team who can jump in here, too!

 

All the best!

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thanks...that helps....she is on zoloft (20mg)...but, sometimes i worry that it was the cause of this (although she did have these thoughts 2 years prior and they did go away.....but, now hear we are after a known strep case and they are back....she does go to therapy so i'll mention the epr.....right now her therapist has been doing emdr (not sure if it's similar)....but, therapy has been working on getting rid of ALL of the other stuff she was experiencing....(SEVERE separation anxiety, couldn't go to school or activities, couldn't play w/ friends, etc.)......so right now we are at the point where she says she "knows it's just thoughts...and it's not real"....but, she still continues to have them.....it is actally both...she's worried she did something wrong (asks over and over if she cheated on something she wins or did well...when she clearly didn't)...and she is fearful of getting sick/throwing up..so that goes along with the fear of ingesting.

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  • 5 weeks later...

hm... I will do some research on that. I think it could be a fear of choking on those things... or dying of those things. I could be wrong, but it could be the fear of dying. Is she afraid that she will die from these things if she swallows them. I ran across some kids who were similar when I was younger but did not think much of it. I will look into it.

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My 6 year old was recently dignosed with PANDAS and the fears that you are talking about were one of her biggest OCD type symptoms She also had the need to confess things she felt guilty about even if they had happened months prior to her telling me but that wasn't as severe. She went through 2-3 months of different fears it actually started with sparkles on her clothing she wouldn't wear or use anything with any type of glitter on it for fear it woud get in her body and make her sick. She also has had similar fears with gas and oil (at the same time) cleaners and chemicals, dirt and germs. She would insist that these things would get in her body and hurt her, we would tell her but they wont she would reply but what if they did (this was with all but the sparkles because that could happen but we deemed them safe to stop the breakdowns) the round and round questioning could go on for ever because she couldn't accept the answer that it wouldn't happen. We worked with her on thinking before she asked about the fear if she could stop and take a breath and then ask herself if what she was thinking about was really something to worry about if if it was something that would really happen or if it did would it really hurt her. Trying to reassure her that there was no way that gas and oil would not appear out of nowhere and get in her body. Being 6 this was really difficult for her but we tried realy hard to help her to switch he thought to something else that she liked to do like drawing or riding her bike just for long enough to stop the bad thought. We would ask her why she was afraid of these things happening and she would often say she doesn't know,she just is.

Because we are still learning about PANDAS and have just recently recieved the diagnosis we havn't done any medication besides antibiotics when she had strep early on but she has been going to counseling weekly for a couple of months now. the mojority of those fears have gone away occasionaly they will come back in minor forms of the same thing when she isn't feeling well or is stresed. Her fears started the beginning of April and they have been minor since the end of June we did see them ramp up again just before school ended we think because of the numerous cases of strep in her class and throughout her school. Not sure if this helps at all.

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  • 1 month later...

Our son has a re-occuring fear of eating poison. During one of his first episodes he told us that he ate a key and a key was stuck in his throat. We were seconds from taking him to ER when we finally figured out that he had imagined that he had ate a key and felt like it was stuck in his throat. Our son often asks if something is poison- if he can die from eating it- and for a while would touch and lick everyday items, constantly. We seem to revolve with the various OCDS' and TICs but the fear of eating poison keeps coming back and resurfacing with him.

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Hi...since this post we worked on this (for just a little bit) in therapy in the summer...she does still have the fear, but it is MUCH better....we also just started last week trying more of an actual exposure to her fears and that is helping as well. She is kind of starting to really understand that her thoughts are tricking her and she has to "throw them out".

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  • 2 years later...

It's anxiety/OCD, I've suffered from hundreds of obsessions and some of them were the same as your daughter's right now, it's actually the reason why I'm up right now past 3 am.

 

For some reason, maybe about 4 to 8 times a month (sometimes more), I'll wake up in the middle of night in panic thinking I'm chocking on needles, clothes pins, marbles, paper, etc. and I literally run out of my bedroom flipping out and running to my mom's bedroom crying for help and trying to cough or throw it up, until I actually wake up enough to realize that I'm fine (which happened tonight, though I don't run into my mom's bedroom anymore, I run to a bathroom instead).

 

I've also had this intense fear of swallowing objects at some points growing up as teenager (because of OCD) where I was terrified of picking up coins and pens etc, because I thought I was going to swallowing them.

 

The only thing I can say that helps is to lower the overall anxiety with the help of a professional and to learn how to treat OCD's symptoms with ERP therapy if this is the case. It's actually a good thing that you've noticed these things when your daughter's still young. Believe me, OCD/anxiety left untreated for years, can destroy someone's life.

 

Take care!

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We have had this too. One flare we only did exposure therapy since I couldn't find a Dr. to do the right blood work and it helped a lot but was difficult. The next flare we had a 30lb weight loss with aversions. His new Dr scared him about his life threatening allergies so he initially was OCD about his Paleo diet which was a good thing but stressful. A month later we added a combo of antiviral and antibiotic. They did the trick in a couple of days and he lost all obsessions. He gained back all his weight in muscle. We still stick with the diet but are more relaxed and forgiving with slip ups.

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