One thing it's important to do when trying to persuade someone close to you to enter into treatment is to focus on the benefits to her. If you talk about the negative ways in which her behavior is affecting the family, such as stress, wasted time, and unpleasantness, you might not enjoy as much success as you would if you instead presented treatment as a way to help her to enjoy her life more, which it will.

It isn't necessarily that your partner or family member doesn't feel bad about the ways in which her symptoms affect you and others in her world. It's just that, chances are, she's too scared of changing for that to be enough of a motivating factor.

You might want to talk instead about activities that now are very difficult for the person — driving, eating in restaurants, going out with friends — that she could, with treatment, enjoy once again.

You may want to talk about her anxiety level. A person with OCD suffers from a tremendous amount of stress. Seeing as anxiety is rarely pleasant, you might want to emphasize that lowering her anxiety probably will make life more enjoyable for her.

Other people who have OCD might fear changing their behaviors because they believe that doing so would place them or others at risk. OCD is based on irrational fears and entrenched behaviors designed to ward off dangers. A woman who fears she might hurt her infant child might therefore understandably worry about losing her anxieties. She may believe that they are the only things keeping her baby safe. Similarly, a person with a fear of falling victim to harm might worry that if he loses his fear, he will become vulnerable. As we know, some amount of healthy and realistic fear is essential to keeping most creatures alive. Oftentimes, a person with OCD will have a very inflated idea about just how much fear is useful.

It has also been noted that people who have OCD often suffer from what is called “black-and-white thinking”: “Either I'm completely safe, or I'm in desperate danger.” There's no in-between for them, when in reality, most things exist somewhere in that big gray place in the middle. Cognitive techniques can be very useful in helping cultivate an appreciation for the richness of life that is to be found in those gray zones.

If the person who has OCD is a family member, you, and possibly the rest of the family, might benefit from some therapy, as well. As you've seen firsthand, living with a person who has a chronic, serious disorder can be very stressful and can evoke guilt, anger, shame, and other draining emotions.

Everyone, Save Thee and Me

Many people with OCD believe that the situations they fear are perfectly reasonable. After all, bridges really do collapse, drivers really do accidentally run over pedestrians on occasion, and people actually do become incurably ill (sometimes from contagion) and die unenviable deaths. Pointing out that the odds are in the person's favor will not necessarily get you anywhere, as you will likely be told that the odds favor everyone, yet some people still fall victim to egregious misfortune. Cognitive therapists do considerable work with patients to challenge this constrained way of thinking.

In many cases, a person with OCD knows that his fears are inflated, at least to some degree. He may not want to confide in a therapist or anyone else for fear that he'll look “crazy” or foolish. You can help reassure him that therapists who treat OCD have definitely “heard it all.”

When the Problem is Acute

In cases of severe OCD symptoms, you and the person who has OCD may want to consider an in-patient option for treatment. This offers several advantages: The patient gets used to doing things with out help from the family; family members may get a much-needed break from the prison of their loved one's OC symptoms, and success, in many cases, can be achieved more quickly than it might be with weekly, or twice weekly, therapist visits (or medication, which may take weeks before it begins to work).