Dr. Tamar Chansky on Freeing Your Child from OCD

Debbie
Hey, Dr. Chansky, welcome back to the podcast.

Tamar Chansky
It’s always so great to be here.

Debbie
I’m looking forward to exploring OCD with you. And I actually just want to give a shout out right now because our conversation when you were on a few years ago was so fascinating. We talked about negative thinking in kids and it was something that I personally was really interested in. I got a lot of great feedback from the community as well. So listeners, I would encourage you to listen to that if you haven’t. I’ll have a link in the show notes page. But today we’re going to be exploring OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, kind of celebrating a revised and updated edition of a book that you wrote about it, which came out 25 years ago. Is that right?

Tamar Chansky
You know, it’s a warp of time, Debbie, I don’t understand it, because it really does not feel like that. But yeah, that is my history. But interestingly, you know, so much has happened really in the intervening years when I first wrote that book, there really wasn’t a book for parents, families about OCD. And so even though I was encouraged by various people to write a broader book about anxiety. I did that later, but I really wanted to take what I was learning from these families, I would really say in the trenches. I mean, just, OCD turns your life upside down when you’re parenting a child with OCD. Not only are you having to do the regular things of parenting that can be daunting every day. Eating, sleeping, getting children to school, homework, you know, just sports, whatever. All of that through this obstacle course that is really frightening for parents and kids. And so I just really wanted to take what I was learning from the families who were, you know, bravely facing OCD and getting better and share that. And that’s, you know, that’s how that book happened 25 years ago. And then just kind of a happy thing happened that I was chatting with my publisher and said, you know, I am thinking of doing some, I don’t know, some Instagram for the 25th. And we just started talking and it grew from this tiny project of doing a little refresh to basic touching every page of that book and updating, which was, I am so grateful for that, for that opportunity to just really bring in the thinking that I had learned over, you know, just the ideas that I learned over the intervening years and share that. So a very long story, not so short. That’s how that happened.

Debbie
It’s so great. I want to provide the name of the book just for listeners. It’s called Freeing Your Child from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And it is a revised and updated edition. It’s just come out in the summer of 2025. I think she’s holding it up. It’s a great cover. It’s a great cover. And I think about how quickly in the neurodivergent space. So I’m coming up on seven years anniversary from when, actually we just passed the seven year anniversary from when Differently Wired came out and things have changed substantially in this space in that time period. And so I can imagine what’s different in 25 years since publishing this. So would you just share some of the top line things that have changed in the conversation surrounding OCD and just people’s awareness and understanding of it?

Tamar Chansky
I think that’s such a great starting point because in so many ways, like you observed in your own realm, just with social media, awareness, conversations, there’s so much more that people are talking about, about, in this case, OCD, that 25 years ago, we didn’t have those resources. We were really, sort of like a word of mouth, a really scary time in that sense, just not having resources. So now with so many people really coming forward, celebrities coming forward and talking about their experiences, as well as just regular folks sharing what their journeys are about, I think one thing that has really changed is that there is a sense of a lessening of the stigma.

In a sense, I will put a little asterisk by that comment because I think some people have a different idea of what OCD is and it’s not the disorder and it’s just kind more of a style or a choice and that can be very lonely for people who are actually contending with a disorder who it’s not a preference, it’s not a choice, it is a really debilitating, you know, partner, not a good one that accompanies them through, you know, every step of their life. So one of the things that I, you know, just feel really strongly about the opportunity with this revised edition and just in general at this time is we now have so much more awareness of the words. What is this sort of phenomenon? Less about what you can do about it. Because even recently, I will still hear people say that they thought that OCD was just something they had to live with. And I thought, wow, we are really missing something if that well-educated person is saying that. And I’ve heard it a number of places that there’s just not always the sense that this is treatable and medications can be part of the answer. Behavior therapy, exposure and response prevention, which we’ll talk about as we go along, really is effective in changing the brain. 

And the brain is where this starts. It doesn’t start with the personality. The way I talk about this with people who don’t have OCD, I think when you go on vacation and you are checking repeatedly to make sure you have your plane tickets or even doing things like turning off the water at your hose and, you know, checking your washing machine, just sort of things that you wouldn’t normally do. That kind of extreme is what can, you know, feel like the day to day, just what you do to get through the day because the messages in the brain are you better do this or else, or this could happen and you have to be prepared. And so we all do have that capacity to have those intrusive thoughts with OCD. That is something that the filter’s not working and the thoughts are just kind of running. And that’s something actually as well that can be helpful for folks who just feel so unacceptable, like just awful and, you know, shame about the intrusive thoughts that they have. They think what is wrong with me? Like they’re really wrong with me that I am having these thoughts. And there was a study that was done, thankfully, you know, research can be just so reassuring to help us know we’re normal, you know, what the breadth of what world is, right?

There was a study that was done where they had people with OCD write their intrusive, unacceptable thoughts, and people who didn’t have OCD write their intrusive, unacceptable thoughts. They mixed them all together and they had OCD experts try to figure out, determine was it someone with OCD or not? And guess what? You know what the answer was? It’s all the same thoughts. We all have intrusive, shameful, embarrassing thoughts. And the difference is when the filter is working right, the way that we want it to, those thoughts may not even reach consciousness or they reach consciousness or just like whatever, or that’s weird or, you know, yeah, that is my coffee on the counter, great. And if you have OCD, the filter is not working that way, things move slowly. The thoughts get stuck, the more that they’re stuck, people feel responsible for the content and feel, you know, just like they’re terrible people. So it’s really important to know that OCD one, it’s treatable. It’s no fault. And that, you know, the problem is not the person. It’s not the situations they’re in. It’s that the thoughts that they’re having are getting stuck and therefore having more authority in that person’s life than they need to.

Debbie
Fascinating. So I know what I think intrusive thoughts are. And that’s a phrase that may be familiar to people. But I always like to just make sure we’re all defining things in the same way. So could you define or maybe give some examples of what an intrusive thought might be?

Tamar Chansky
Sure. So, you’re walking through your life and you might think, you hear, let’s say, you hear an ambulance go by and you think, gosh, you know, you think, but it also happens automatically. It’s not like, huh, you’re processing. This is the big, you know, highlight of intrusive thoughts is just like what they sound, that these thoughts barge in, they don’t knock. It’s not sort of our contemplative, like what we’re doing right now, Debbie, in this beautiful moment of being together is not intrusive thoughts. We’re talking with each other. We’re thinking, we’re like, huh, we’re processing, reflecting all of that. That’s what humans do. Also, we have the thoughts that just kind of jump in. Was that clear? Was that, you know, they’re happening sort of on another level at the same time as we’re trying to go through our lives with OCD. And, you know, again, as we said, everybody can have these thoughts. They are often intrusive thoughts of harm or maybe symmetry or doubt. You know, did I not turn off the, you know, the coffee maker? I, you know, something like that.

The first thought is the intrusive thought. Then we start to engage with it. That becomes more our intention. That’s where treatment comes in because if instead of engaging and reinforcing and going back and checking that coffee maker and taking a picture of the plug being unplugged and all the things that we might feel we need to do because the thoughts are unrelenting, coming, they’re not connected to reality of what’s going on. The more that we can see sort of catch it early and say that’s, you know, that’s my OCD or that’s an intrusive thought then that decreases the authority of that thought. We know it’s like a brain hiccup. My brain is telling me this, but I know it’s not true and that gives us a lot of choice about what we do next instead of running back and checking we might learn how to again kind of shrink the significance of that thought, relabel it as you know that’s a brain glitch, that’s OCD, it’s a feeling, it’s not a fact, and then learn to ride out that uncomfortable feeling that anybody would have if they thought, you know, did I leave something on and see the miraculous incredible thing that the body resets, the nervous system resets, because there wasn’t an emergency.

Sometimes people will hear this and it’s new information about how OCD works. You don’t have to listen to those thoughts. You don’t have to do what they say. I’m to go home and tell my husband, my this, my that. You don’t have to do this. Let’s start now. And the thing is, change is so possible for all of us, but really helpful to do it slowly, gradually, and think about how somebody who has OCD is very much controlled by these thoughts. That’s their starting point. And so treatment has to be different. Treatment needs to be that the person has control, makes choices. What do they feel ready to tackle, what feels the easiest to tackle or what’s the thing that’s really getting in the way the most that they want help tackling. I always say I wish that just the magic wand of this, you know, understanding would change everything. It does change a lot when you understand that you can, you know, what’s going on and that the stakes aren’t what they feel like, but then behaviors or patterns, we have to gradually, you know, change them.

Debbie
One of the things that surprised me in your book was just the prevalence of this in kids. You said one in 200 children in the US have OCD. I’m wondering, does it show up differently? Like how would a parent know this is beyond or this is different than being a really sensitive person? This is different than anxiety that this is something, we need to explore it and potentially there’s something bigger at play here.

Tamar Chansky
And that’s kind of the perennial question as a parent, right? While we’re doing everything else, we also have that antenna out for, is this okay? Like, is this in the range of this is gonna move along? And that’s really, I think the clincher is a lot of times with kids, you know, they may have a fear that comes up, a new situation, and we just sort of work on it and see, is this gonna move through our conversations, greater understanding or experience with that. Let’s say a teenager learning to drive or a little kid starting to go to school or something. Of course, there’s going to be that discomfort at first, but is it moving? And that’s the thing that is kind of uncanny, but sort of crystal clear for parents. It’s just that gut feeling of like, yikes, nothing, like all my tricks, whatever, all the things that I know to do in other situations aren’t working here. Normally, you reassure your child about something, and it’s like, okay, or maybe not so easy, but you see that reassurance has registered and it’s changed something. And that does not happen with OCD. So what, you know, while we might say, kids grow out of some things and that is true. Kids grow into OCD if they don’t have the direction to do something else.

To answer that more directly, if you feel like you’re, if you find that your child is getting more distressed by situations instead of being kind of reassured and comforted by things that you’re saying to them and that the kind of pattern of more and more things need to be checked, redone, avoided, things like that. So it just becomes a way of life that is actually shrinking your child’s world. Really good time to just go talk. There’s so many resources online and talk to your pediatrician and seek out help. Interestingly about OCD, working through parents can be as effective if not more than working with a child directly. I really tailor it to what’s going on with the family and what’s going to work best, but that’s kind of different than if a child’s having difficulty with some other things, it may really be that they need to be the one. But because kids come to us to know what the world is, is it safe, is it not, is it this, is it that, the more that parents understand what their role is, it’s not to make it all better. The way you long game make it all better is by explaining what’s actually going on, which is very dis-unintuitive.

Debbie
That makes total sense. And I have a question. And let’s see if I can get it out in a way that makes sense to both of us. But I’m just thinking about autistic kids, for example, who may have repetitive behavior, who might have stims that are self-regulating, or want to organize things in certain ways. And I could see how some of those things might be perceived as obsessive behavior if it’s a deep area of interest that you’re really into. So I just want to clarify that OCD is more about the thought behind that stem or the behavior that it’s the thinking has to be a piece of it, right? The intrusive thought has to be a piece of it for it to be OCD. Am I getting that right?

Tamar Chansky
Generally, that’s sort of the broadest yes would be that, that there is an intrusive thought about really, you know, stim, you can tell me, Debbie, but in my experience, this is something that is positive. It’s not a fearful kind of behavior or whatever. And so that’s not what OCD is. It is about how, you know, how do kids figure out the best way to get rid of the very fearful thought that they’re having or feeling that maybe if they don’t, you know, tap five times, something bad is going to happen to their family or they don’t, you know, wash over and over till it feels right, they’re going to get somebody sick or they’re going to get sick. So, the emotional tone of it, that’s a really important distinction. And kids on the spectrum can also have OCD, but those behaviors are different from other behaviors that they may have.

Debbie
Great. Okay, that makes sense.  So earlier you were saying that you work with a lot of parents because unlike some things we might be doing to support our kids if they’re struggling with certain aspects of how they’re moving through the world, the focus would be on them. And here, there’s so much that parents can do. So can you talk with us about some of the ways that parents might support a child who has OCD to experience more relief?

Tamar Chansky
Absolutely. In the book, I talk about one, two, three, four, five. I’m not good with numbers. Talk about five steps and I’ll just run through what they are and then we can, you know, talk about an example or something like that. You know, again, we are wired to remove suffering. Thank goodness. Right. That is a good instinct that we would not want to get rid of. In this situation, it’s more of a long game of helping kids to feel better by having more control over and understanding what’s going on.

So first step, let’s say, a child comes and says, there’s a dot on this. It’s dirty, it’s contaminated. I can’t wear this shirt or something like that. Step one. We have problem solvers, but we’re going to put that on pause. Reflect and connect, right? It is very difficult. I still work on this every single day in my own life. It’s helpful to work on, but it’s work. Reflect and connect. Okay, so you’re really upset about the shirt. I want to understand what’s going on.

Step two, relabel what’s going on. So your child comes to you with the story or narrative, I can’t do this or else I’m gonna have bad luck. So you wanna help them to kind of relabel what it is. So your brain is telling you that if you wear that shirt that you’re going to have bad luck. What do you think about it? I get that it feels that way and that’s a hard feeling. There’s another part of you have a different idea. So you’re really not kind of jumping into that great problem solving that we all can do until we’ve decided what the actual problem is. It’s not the shirt. It’s not your child being picky or something like that. Excuse me, it’s the message that your child is hearing about that situation.

So once you kind of have more of a consensus, if you will, about what’s going on, then resist with what I call show and tell, either what do you wanna say to your brain? This word, test in school, what would you say? Bad luck isn’t real, or that’s not how it works, or how do you want to show your brain that even though it’s uncomfortable because you got that message and that’s not your fault, that’s just what you’re working on now, how do you wanna show your brain? What do you feel ready to do with that? If you don’t ready to wear your shirt, can you catch with it? Again, that sort of step by step, what do they feel ready for? Any step forward, or even hanging out with the problem, having a different frame for the problem is a step forward.

And then once you’ve done that, I call it pivot on purpose and refocus elsewhere. So let’s say the child is said, let’s say it’s a young child, don’t boss me around. Bossy brain, you know, give it a name like that. That’s my favorite shirt. I’m going to wear it. Then you’re not going to stand there and have the argument. Your child doesn’t need to keep arguing with, you know, the intrusive thoughts. Pivot on purpose and do something else. Okay, you did a great job bossing back, you know, your worry brain. It’s still going to feel uncomfortable for five or 10 minutes. What do you want to do till that feeling passes? Should we go pet the dog, do you want to dance in the living room, do it, whatever. Something active is really helpful. And then the last step, just reinforcing, really good job, changing the story of what’s going on and being really accurate with that and being really brave with it.

That’s a mouthful as Debbie, many of my answers have been. I hope your listeners are able to kind of parse my long-windedness. But maybe one of those steps, reflect and connect, relabel, resist with show and tell, pivot on purpose, reinforce, maybe one of those steps is just like, huh, you know what, that clicks. I could see doing that today with my family, I’m gonna stick with that. You don’t have to do the whole progression like that, but having those different steps, it’s like you have tools, you have a response that’s different from, don’t worry about it, it’s okay. Nothing wrong with that, it just is not going to change this problem.

Debbie
I took a bunch of notes and I wonder if, first of all, I would think that this is scary for a parent. If your kid has these intrusive thoughts, we can get very triggered with our own fear. What does this mean? So I could see there being a real desire to want to fix it, as you said. Problem solve is what we want to do initially. And so I’m wondering, in your experience of working with parents, are there specific areas where they tend to get stuck? What have you found is one of the hardest stages of or aspects of this five step plan that you’ve just walked us through?

Tamar Chansky
I would say the hardest thing is sort of step one. But because again, we see our child in distress and maybe about something like you said, it’s scary. Why is my really reasonable child talking about the cartoon characters coming alive or something like that? It’s like, uh-oh, are we dealing with something else here? And that’s why I think it’s just so helpful if you can, whether it’s reading a book, going online, having a consult, that so much happens in one meeting, I think, for parents to just understand that you’re safe. This is garden variety. I’ve never heard something that I always say, look at my face when you tell me the things that your brain is. Does my face change? I’m not like, my gosh. It’s like, yep, that’s a cousin of what I heard from somebody yesterday. It’s all normal garden variety OCD. Yes, it feels scary, but once you know what it is, that’s your power as a parent. Then you will be able to mobilize in a way that will actually help your child.

I would say, really have grace with yourself, get support, get information so that you can be fluent, be flexible, be free yourself, understanding that this isn’t gonna hurt your child, those thoughts in the way that you think it’s not like that. And that your child isn’t, people worry this is a thought disorder, do they have a psychotic process or something like that, they’re hearing voices that might be a way that kids are describing already kind of doing that relabeling. When a parent, there’s nothing sort of harder than a parent being afraid. We have to, like you said, we have to deal with our own fears. So that’s not a small part of this equation. That’s why I wrote this book, as I said in the beginning, I was seeing parents so fearful. And I thought if they knew that this was okay, there was a book about it. It’s not just their lives that just like, my gosh, we’re so alone. We can’t talk with anybody about this and no one understands. When you know that this is a thing, that’s going to give you power then to show your child that this is a thing that you can overcome.

Debbie
So let’s spend a few minutes talking about overcoming. What might it look like? Are we hoping or can our kids get to a point where those intrusive thoughts are just not a factor anymore? Is it more just being able to roll, you know, kind of surf the waves, so to speak, so it doesn’t kind of impact you? What is the trajectory, hopefully, look like for these kids?

Tamar Chansky
Such an important point to set expectations. The thing is that we can’t turn off a switch for those intrusive thoughts. So the first thing to change is what we control, which is our behavior. So kids can start to do exercises, practicing, skipping a ritual, changing a ritual, shortening a ritual, delaying a ritual, all those things, changes, neuroplasticity changes the circuit, changes the pattern about that situation. As you change your behavior, the intensity of the anxiety and emotions around it diminishes. Eventually, your brain starts filtering out those thoughts and questions because you’re getting the part that’s like, do I need to act on this? Do I not? Getting that part more functioning the way that you need it to and it really will respond to your showing it how you want to respond to the situation.

That’s kind of the short plan of it is that you always, you work on the behavior and that will eventually change the thoughts. When you think about, I use the analogy of junk mail. Now, updating 25 years, spam. Back in the day, at some point, originally, when we got a message about something, you know, someone calling us or something in the mail, maybe the first few times we might have taken it seriously because we didn’t understand what junk mail or spam are, and sometimes they even catch us now. But you learn what that is and you change, you don’t take it seriously, read it carefully, all of that, you’re like, you know, put it in the recycle or whatever. As kids start to understand and trust more what these thoughts are and how they are not part of them and they’re not important, even though they, or it might be about very important things, life or death, illness, safety, they’re not important to them now, that’s not a signal that they need, that they start to, even if the thoughts are there, they’re not attending to them in the same way, they’re seeing them more as junk mail.

A lot of times, I’ll have, so kids can expect that they will get to a point where they’re functioning very well, they’re not listening to these thoughts, they’re doing the things that they want. And then we always say, if things change and something new comes up, because that might happen as you get to a novel developmental stage or whatever, if these things are sticking, you’re having trouble, come back, do a one time, often it’s just that, to check in because then you sort of get up to speed with that situation too. And I’ll just add, often when kids come back and I tell them about something that they, when they were seven or something and now they’re 15, and they say, I can’t believe that that’s what I thought about them. There’s that confidence, it’s wonderful. Like that’s what you want. Those are the kind of learning curves that are possible over and over.

Debbie
It’s very hopeful. It’s a very optimistic message. And I think with everything in the neurodivergent space, information is so important that our kids understand. And I’m such a big proponent of telling kids about the brain science and what’s really going on with their executive function or the ADHD or their autism or their anxiety or whatever is going on because then again, we’re normalizing it as you said, where this is just in the context of how you’re wired, this makes absolute perfect sense that this is your experience. As a way to kind of wrap up, are there any other, if there are listeners here who are thinking this may be going on with my child and they’re feeling anxious about it or concerned or they’re stuck themselves, any last thoughts for them, kind of big picture thoughts about how they can show up for their kiddo?

Tamar Chansky
I would say, if this is resonating in any way for yourself or someone you know, just get some more information, ask questions so that you can kind of get back on your feet, be in a steady place to then decide what you need to do to go forward. Maybe you don’t, your child doesn’t need therapy. Maybe you just need some more information. You’re gonna try some things. Often, that happens that people will read the book or they’ve read, watched a video or something online and they’ve started to try some of these things and they say, you know, it’s kind of work. I need help because this is scary and I am so overwhelmed with whether or not I can do this. But I see that something different is happening. As long as you can keep moving, your child is going to keep moving too.

Debbie
Your book is such a helpful resource. I would really encourage anybody listening who’s navigating this in their life. You explain it very accessibly for readers. And it is kind of the guidebook that helps you feel like I’m not alone in this. And there’s a way to move through this. The name of the book again, it’s called Freeing Your Child from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s a revised and updated edition, which just came out this summer. And is there anywhere in particular that you would like listeners to connect with you?

Tamar Chansky
So I do, on Instagram and on my website, there’s so much of the back catalog. These are perennial issues. I mean, I do update as we see, because yeah, here we are. But if you have other anxiety questions, most topics I’ve covered a lot over the years and just use the great search function on my website and there’s probably a blog post about what’s on your mind and I hope you get just a few ideas to make it a little more understandable.

Debbie
That’s great. And listeners, just so you know, Tamar is, I see you as one of kind of the foremost experts having these conversations and anxiety and OCD. Other books listeners you might want to check out are Freeing Yourself from Anxiety, Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking, which is the one that we discussed a couple years ago when Tamar was on the show. I’ll have links to all of those places as well as social media, etc. on the show notes page. Tamar, thank you so much. It’s been such a fascinating conversation and congratulations on the complete redo of this important resource.

Tamar Chansky
Thank you. It was such a pleasure talking to you.