OCD and intrusive thoughts · Our Story, chapter two

Into the Darkest Depths: Battling OCD and Intrusive Thoughts

One late-night sentence captured what none of us could fix with reassurance: our daughter was exhausted from fighting something we could not see.

By Michael · April 23, 2025

A parent’s lived experience—not therapy or medical advice. This story reflects one family and one difficult season. It does not describe every person with OCD or prescribe how another family should respond.

Content note: This chapter discusses severe OCD symptoms, intrusive thoughts, emotional distress, and sleep loss. It does not describe the specific content of Kayla’s intrusive thoughts. Read at your own pace.

OCD and intrusive thoughts awareness: a person sits curled on a chair beneath a symbolic stone burden. — Some burdens are invisible to everyone except the person carrying them.

Late on a weeknight

“Dad, I’m tired.”

My daughter was 19 and in her first semester of college. It had been three years since her OCD diagnosis, but we were at the most difficult point we had experienced. For months, OCD and intrusive thoughts had pushed her into distress night after night.

I walked over and asked, “What’s bothering you? How can I help?” She looked at me through tears and whispered, “Dad, I’m tired.”

I knew she did not mean only the lack of sleep. She was tired of fighting. Tired of not feeling like herself. Most of all, tired of feeling helpless.

As a parent, you want to carry the weight for your child—even when the weight cannot be transferred.

I wanted to be her anchor while part of me wanted to say, “I’m tired too, love.” My wife and I were physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. In that moment, however, the most important thing I could offer was to stay beside her.

The slow build

The hardest night did not arrive all at once.

Her OCD had ebbed and flowed since diagnosis, shaped by therapy, stress, and periods of progress. For a while, we believed she had a better grip on it. The shame around the intrusive thoughts had eased, and there had been room to breathe.

Then life changed. High school ended, college approached, and adulthood seemed to arrive with expectations and uncertainty she did not feel ready to carry. In our family’s experience, that transition coincided with symptoms becoming more intense.

By the start of her first semester, the thoughts felt relentless. There was no sentence I could offer that would create the certainty she wanted or make the distress disappear.

After diagnosisTherapy, learning, and periods of meaningful progress

A major transitionGraduation, college, and the uncertainty of adulthood

Symptoms intensifiedLong days, lost sleep, repeated doubt, and nightly distress

A parent’s perspective

I could offer presence, even when I could not offer certainty.

My wife and I had both lived through our own mental-health struggles. I do not have OCD, and I would never pretend my experience was the same as hers. I did remember what it felt like to be consumed by anxiety and unable to reason my way back to calm.

I hugged her and told her I believed she would get through this, that the right people were helping her, and that she did not have to carry it alone. I wanted my confidence to become her confidence.

Even then, I knew my words could not settle what OCD kept demanding she settle. She wanted reassurance that the thoughts did not reveal who she was. Every answer seemed to invite another check, another doubt, and another question.

What I understand now

Support did not require me to win an argument with the thought.

I could listen, remain steady, follow the guidance of her qualified providers, and remind her through my presence that she was loved. That was different from promising certainty neither of us could produce.

One puzzle at a time

Wordle became a small place to meet.

At the time, we were learning that repeatedly answering checking questions could become part of our daughter’s OCD cycle. Instead of trying to disprove each thought, I turned to something we already shared: Wordle.

The game did not erase the thoughts. She sometimes solved each clue through tears. But for a few minutes, we had something else in front of us—five letters, six guesses, and a problem we could actually work on together.

After Wordle, we played another game where we guessed a movie from a single still image. She would curl up beside me on the couch, and we became puzzle champions. It turned into a nightly ritual: a small pocket of connection in a day that had felt consumed by distress.

Connection, not a cure

These games were not treatment, and this is not advice to use distraction in place of professional care. They were simply part of how our family stayed close during that season.

OCD family connection: wooden letter tiles spell “ENJOY SMALL GAINS,” representing the shared puzzles in this family’s story. — A shared puzzle offered a few minutes of connection.

What the little moments meant

Hope did not arrive as one dramatic breakthrough.

There were no instant fixes. We learned to notice smaller moments without pretending they meant the struggle was over.

One momentA few minutes when something else held her attention.

One puzzleA problem we could sit beside each other and solve.

One hugA quiet way to say, “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Looking back, I do not see Wordle as the thing that changed the course of OCD. I see it as evidence that connection could still exist inside a very hard night.

Sometimes the moments that carry a family are not large enough to look heroic from the outside.

Sometimes they are one Wordle puzzle at a time.

Continue learning about OCD and intrusive thoughts.

For plain-language awareness, explore the intrusive-thoughts section of our learning hub. For professional information and routes to help, visit the International OCD Foundation’s OCD education and our Trusted Resources page.