Empowering Parents

“I can’t reassure them anymore”

“I’ve changed my life for them”

“I feel like I’m failing”

These are three different parents, in three different rooms, telling me variations of the same thing. None of them are failing. All of them are exhausted, frightened, and doing something much harder than anyone told them it would be.

That’s what my new book, When Your Teenager’s Mind Gets Loud, is for.

The clinical guidelines according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) name CBT/ERP as the gold standard intervention for treating OCD in adolescents. There is certainly scientific research to back this. Yet those guidelines were written in 2005. They were reviewed in 2019, and yet they remain substantively unchanged, almost two decades on.

I have seen enough families over the years to recognise their struggle, and after my first clinical book for professionals, I wanted to make something suitable and relatable for parents who live the reality of the hundredth reassurance seeking cycle, the exhaustion of listening to distress while following the guidance not to offer reassurance.

It’s a lonely job for parents and primary caregivers, holding down the fort while the young person they care for goes through hell.

I’ve written this, hopefully scheduled for release in December, to change the way parents think about OCD, and to empower them to be good enough parents in the face of atypical circumstances.

This book is everything I can offer. It’s something I hope can genuinely change lives.