The 5 Zones of OCD

Your cell phone rings and you see it’s your child. You might wonder, “With whom will I be speaking? My child, OCD or a little of both?” In this blog, I’ll offer a way to characterize how your child is showing up in the moment—and guide your response.

Are you the parent of a teen or a college aged kid with OCD? Welcome to the OCD Power Parenting Podcast. Here you’ll find information to help you go to bed at night with the certainty that you are doing everything within your power to release your child from the grips of OCD and reinvent a more hopeful tomorrow.

I’m Dr. Vicki Rackner, and I share my experience as a mother of a child diagnosed with OCD when he was in college, as a physician and as a coach with two decades of experience helping my clients enjoy higher levels of performance.

When you talk with your child, you might get the sense there are three people in the conversation: you, your child and your child’s OCD. Figuring out who is showing up will help you connect with your child more effectively and have better interactions. 

I’d like to introduce you to the idea of the 5 Zones of OCD. They describe your child’s relationship to OCD in the moment. There are five OCD Zones: Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red.  The OCD zone is like the “You are here” arrow on a mall map. It helps you know which way to go to get to where you want to go. I’ll first describe them, then invite a special guest to share his experiences in these zones. 

Your child is in a lifelong relationship with OCD. I imagine a two-headed monster setting up housekeeping in your child’s brain. Their names are OCD and ANXIETY. At any moment in time, the Monster is trying to become more powerful and get in the driver’s seat of your child’s life.

Your child learns skills and tools to help them decide the OCD Monster will not run or ruin their lives. Instead of the OCD Monster imprisoning them, they will learn to imprison the OCD Monster and lock all the doors. You and your child may want to give OCD a name.

At any given moment in time, there is a power balance between your child and the OCD Monster. I find it helpful to think about different OCD zones.

In the BLUE ZONE, you see your child with absolutely no evidence of OCD. Your child is free! It’s as if OCD went into a deep sleep.  Think of the tranquility of a blue lake. You and your child would love to see them spend as much time as possible in the Blue Zone. 

In the GREEN ZONE, your child has just waged a battle with OCD and triumphed.  Your child is a victor! They recognized the obsessive thought for what it was, resisted the urge to perform the compulsion and lived through their anxiety and discomfort. My son was recently in the GREEN ZONE. He said it was like having a heart attack for two hours. And he prevailed! In that moment, he was in the driver’s seat and OCD was locked away. Each Green Zone victory sets the stage for more victories. 

In the YELLOW ZONE, your child has the awareness that a thought COULD be OCD, but they’re not sure.  Your child is AWARE. I often got calls from my son that went something like this, “I have a thought and I’m not sure if it’s real or it’s OCD.” Almost every time he asked the question he was right. OCD was trying to seduce him down the path into OCD Land, but he saw it for what it was. He did not going to give his power to OCD. 

Your child might tell you that the single hardest part of managing their brains is distinguishing between a healthy through and an OCD thought.

In the ORANGE ZONE, your child and your child’s OCD are wrestling for power. Part of your child’s awareness includes the possibility that this is an obsessive thought, but the OCD may be very cunning. My son’s OCD says, “This time it’s different. I’m telling you the truth.” When your child is in the OCD Orange Zone, you might get the sense that they are sleepwalking. The bodies might be going through the motions of going to class or joining the dinner table, but their minds are driving in and out of OCD Land. 

When your child is in the RED ZONE, OCD has hijacked their lives. Your child is in their own nightmare, convinced that what they are experiencing is real. This is the crisis zone. 

Have you ever shared a bed with someone having a nightmare? The way to put an end to the anguish is to wake this person up. Even when you wake them up they can still be upset because it feels so real. You comfort them by saying, “It’s just a nightmare. It isn’t real. You’re okay.” We’ll talk about Red Zone  strategies in a future podcast episode.

As your child learns to manage OCD, one of the first skills they master is answering the question, “Does this thought come from my healthy brain or from my OCD wiring glitch?” The critical skill of witnessing their thoughts sets the stage to manage healthy thoughts differently than obsessions.

My son tells me this is the hardest part about getting to the other side of OCD.

Your child experiences the most anxiety and danger and fear in the Red Zone. The can walk up the ladder of safety from Red to Orange to Yellow to Green to Blue. 

The way you respond to your child in the moment will be guided by your read of which zone your child occupies in any given moment.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope that you found value i this content. Please feel welcome to share this with members of your community who share your commitment to helping your child get to the other side of OCD