Group Psychotherapy Using ERP
The most immediate benefit of group OCD therapy for children and adolescents is the support your child feels as she sees and hears from other young people who are dealing with the same issues she's struggled with on her own for so long. There is an immediate emotional lift felt, especially for preteens and teens, when the loneliness they've experienced is replaced by camaraderie.
Another common positive response that can come from the group therapy experience is your child's realization that she's not “the worst off.” No matter how bad she feels about her own symptoms, there's inevitably another child who seems worse, at least to her. Then there's the very real possibility that your child can help at least one other member of her group by providing a mirror or a model for that child's struggle. The power of identifying and communicating with others coping with the same relentless burden cannot be overestimated for young people with OCD.
Amy Wilinsky describes her first meeting with someone like herself in Passing for Normal, A Memoir of Compulsion:
When Bryant described how his father had always reacted to his tics — with an initial confusion that grew quickly into anger and shame — it was as if I'd discovered a twin from whom I'd been separated at birth; I'd never even imagined being able to describe how that particular rejection felt to anyone else.
