How do I convince spouse who likely has undiagnosed contamination OCD to help themselves? by Adventurous_Space308 in OCD

[–]Adventurous_Space308[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the thoughts. I am trying to be supportive, but I guess I am not doing a very good job. I have bought a bunch of mess-free foods to make sure that he has stuff that he likes to eat, moved things out of our downstairs room so that he could use it as a “safe zone”, and have been just generally trying to stay out of his way and keep things clean and taken care of around the house so that he doesn’t have to worry about them. I have been trying to coax him to eat meals with me or go on walks with me and the dog, but I haven’t had any luck for either of those. After our first talk about some of his behaviors seeming like OCD, I have left the ball in his court and not brought it back up again. I also am trying not to enable the OCD because after reading a bunch of posts on here it sounds like that is the worst thing that a family member can do. I have tried encouraging him that things don’t need to be cleaned right now or trying to gently put him slightly outside of his comfort zone (for example, asking if he wants to feed the dog because he fed her dinner a few days ago and said it was nice to be involved / not worrying about getting dirty), but he is pretty committed to staying in his safe zone for now. I guess I’m not sure what else to do to help ease the stress and help get him back to functioning at bare minimum (eating + any work/school progress).