I had my last session with one of my favorite clients, let's call her Sylvia. 10 year-old Sylvia came to see me six months ago because she had some problems at home and school. She always seemed to get 'stuck'. She would get stuck turning light switches on and off for five minutes because "it never felt right, it didn't feel like it was really off or on". Showers were burdensome because Sylvia never seemed to finish washing her arms, sometimes it would take her an hour and mom would often have to get in and help her. Her teacher stopped assigning her homework because Sylvia would stay up until 12am erasing and rewriting her work because "my letters weren't perfect." With the help of medication and specific therapy to address Sylvia's OCD, she improved and was soon ready to graduate. One of the techniques she often used to fight her obsessive thoughts and compulsions was to say no in her mind to the thought and decide to not do the compulsion . We called it "saying no to her OCD bully". At her last session I asked her,
"How's it going with your OCD bully?"
"Oh, it's fine, I really don't have any problems with him any more."
"Oh really? How's that?"
"He's on vacation in Hawaii and I don't think he's coming back for awhile."