In Episode 8 of Wisdom Shared, I sit down with my friend, Rosemary Bushey, and her 15-year-old daughter Lauren who was diagnosed with a mental illness in 2018. Signs and symptoms appeared much earlier but Rosemary and her husband assumed it was typical teenage defiance. It was only after witnessing a decline in grades, unusual behaviors and what they refer to as The Crisis that led to Lauren’s hospitalization, that they finally received a diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). A staunch advocate for her daughter and removing the stigma around mental illness, Rosemary is currently getting her master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. In this episode, she shares some of the behaviors and activities Lauren engaged in, how the family responded, her guilt over not recognizing the patterns sooner, and how she and other parents can advocate for their children and take care of themselves. Lauren speaks openly about what it’s like to be diagnosed with OCD, and she offers up her wisdom to other kids and parents and emphasizes how important it is to talk about what’s going on and not to be ashamed.
Rosemary Bushey currently lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two daughters, Lauren 16 and Amelia 13. She is a 49-year-old runner, coach, and vegan Instagram influencer. Rosemary was born in Columbia, South America and has lived in New York for most of her life. She is currently completing a master’s degree to work as a bilingual Clinical Mental Health Counselor. She is pursuing this degree because her older daughter was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) at age 14. Rosemary has always been passionate about food, fitness, and the body/mind connection. Two years ago, she adopted a vegan lifestyle, and is avidly exploring the connection between mental health and nutrition. She shares vegan recipes and gorgeous photos of the food she has prepared on her Instagram page, @simplyveggielicious. Lauren loves to write, draw, and sing.
https://www.instagram.com/simplyveggielicious/
Song credit: "idontwannabeyouanymore" by Billie Eilish, sung by Lauren Bushey
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
FOUNDATIONS
International OCD Foundation
https://iocdf.org
TREATMENT FACILITIES
Bradley Hospital
https://www.lifespan.org/centers-services/intensive-program-obsessive-compulsive-disorder
Rogers Hospital
https://rogersbh.org
McLean Hospital
https://www.mcleanhospital.org
HOUSING FOR FAMILIES
Ronald McDonald House
https://www.rmhc.org
APPROACHES
Integrative Medicine
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Exposure Therapy
EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEW
You are welcome to share the wisdom from this episode. Please be sure to credit: “Ep. 8, Rosemary Bushey, Courtesy of Wisdom Shared Podcast with Carole Blueweiss.
QUOTES FROM LAUREN:
I always struggled with my OCD, so I always knew something was wrong, but it was so normal for me that I was kind of used to it
OCD feeds off of stress. So whenever I'm stressed out about something, the OCD just gets much worse.
I always had urges to ritualize. And when I felt uncomfortable, I'd have to fix things a certain way.
I had these fears of my family dying. If I didn't move something a certain way in my room, I couldn't leave my room until I fixed everything a certain way, which took a while.
For the kids that are struggling with this, you know, trust your parents, they're trying to help you
You have to help yourself and you have to work towards bettering yourself and you can't give up.
Stop refusing to take other people's help. I was refusing to take my medicine because I was too scared. Even the smallest steps can make such a big difference. You have to think of the future you want for yourself. You have to think about how it's going to help you in the end. It might hurt now, but push yourself.
It gives you more power over your mental illness by feeling free to talk about it with other people, like to be able to learn about it and inform others about it, and really just know everything about what you're going through.
I feel like the foods that are in the vegan cuisine are much better for your mental health.
QUOTES FROM ROSEMARY:
When she was diagnosed with OCD, I had to jump through so many hoops in order to find help.
A lot of her OCD started manifesting in the way her shoes needed to be in certain way.
We had no clue that we were dealing with OCD… it was exhausting.
She would come home and do homework for hours and hours in a way that wasn't normal. She kept erasing. If a letter wasn't completely perfect, she had to erase it and do it again.
I kept seeing the compulsions but I didn't see the obsessions. The obsessions were hidden.
As parents, the most difficult thing we had to deal with was feeling guilty. The feeling of guilt because I kept saying, “Oh my God, how could I ignore the signs?” I knew they were there, but she was functional. And all her doctors said, “there's no way you could have known. There's no way anybody could have known she had OCD,” but I kept blaming myself and saying, “Oh my God, I wish I would have found help before.”
She was looking for me to repeat the same phrase in the same tone of voice exactly the same way I said it before. There were times that she needed to repeat or make me repeat things three times or five times.
There was no way anybody could communicate with her. There was no conversation, no communication.
She couldn't dress herself. She couldn't choose what to put on. She was overwhelmed by choosing what to wear. And then it got to a point where she couldn't help herself dress. She would be very stiff and we would have to dress her, but she couldn't help. She would scream and get into a panic and anxiety because she wanted her pants put on a certain way. But she couldn't move her legs. She had to be stiff. It was extremely weird, bizarre behavior. Then she couldn't brush her teeth because she wasn't supposed to move her arm.
For Hispanic people, it is a huge stigma mental illness. They don't talk about mental illness. In this country too, there's a lot of stigma related to mental illness.
Last year, I put her basically on a plant-based diet and its helping her and she feels better. She feels good about what she's putting in her body.
She is so mature and so knowledgeable about her disorder. It really makes me proud.
My beliefs were aligned with my nutrition, with my choices.
As a parent, and I could say to any parent, we are the best advocates for our children.
Just knowing other parents are going through the same or similar situations can be very comforting and can help a lot.
[00:00:00] Rosemary Bushey: A lot of people still do not believe in mental illness, and it is huge, especially right now with what's going on with Covid-19. At first hand, I really experienced what it was to try to just navigate the mental health system and it was pretty challenging.
[00:00:27] Carole Blueweiss: Welcome to Wisdom Shared, where parents are the experts and connections inspire change. My name is Carole Blueweiss, and today on my eighth episode, I met with my friend Rosemary Bushey, the mother of two girls, one of whom was diagnosed with OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
[00:00:49] Rosemary was born in Columbia, South America, and now lives in New Hampshire. She was studying to be a biology teacher when she changed careers.
[00:00:59] Rosemary Bushey: I realize the need for mental health helpers, counselors, and that's what made me, you know, make the transition into mental health and to try to understand her disorder even more. And at the same time, try to help other parents, other children who are going through the same thing.
[00:01:21] Carole Blueweiss: Rosemary is a food influencer, an avid runner, and a high school coach. When I sat down with Rosemary to talk about Lauren and about their experience with mental illness, I really did not understand OCD.
[00:01:35] Rosemary explained what happened to her family and what led to Lauren's hospitalization on the weekend of Thanksgiving 2018. Lauren spoke with me on a different occasion and opened up to me about what it was like for her and the advice that she has for others who are dealing with mental illness.
[00:01:57] Lauren Bushey: At least for the kids that are struggling with this, you know, trust your parents. They're trying to help you.
[00:02:04] Carole Blueweiss: Both of them describe the roller coaster ride of uncertainty, waiting lists, hospitalizations, and much more. Lauren and Rosemary both share their inside story about learning and about managing an illness that is not easy to understand. Lauren is an aspiring writer, dancer, and singer, and she gives us her unique perspective of what it's like to live with this diagnosis as a teenager.
[00:02:32] And also she speaks about her memories as a younger child. She is remarkably wise and she has a lot of wisdom to share with kids and parents about mental illness and the importance of talking about it. Let's listen and learn.
[00:02:47] Lauren Bushey: It gives you more power over your mental illness by feeling free to talk about it with other people, you know, like to be able to learn about it and inform others about it, and really just know everything about what you're going through. And to be able to, you know, not feel embarrassed about what's happening with you because a bunch of other people are going through the same thing and you just don't know it and you don't see it.
[00:03:14] Rosemary Bushey: So, a lot of her OCDs started manifesting in the way her shoes, they needed to be in certain way because that's the way they needed to be. Because her OCD told her that's how she needed to have the shoes. At the time, I mean, I found the behavior more, especially being a preteen, more as defiant.
[00:03:38] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me a little bit about Lauren.
[00:03:40] Rosemary Bushey: She was always a very good student. She graduated high honor roll, eighth grade. She's a young high school student. She was a toddler. She has a very strong personality, loves dancing, loves singing, very happy, always upbeat and outgoing. But there was always this personality trait that she is very...she wants what she wants. Hardheaded. So as a young kid, we just always thought she's just a little bit more she wants what she wants and she has strong personality.
[00:04:19] So as she started heading into her teens, there were symptoms, signs back. She went from getting hundreds to getting zeros. She wasn't doing anything in the school because she was in OCD. She was ritualizing 24/7, and we didn't know this. So she was doing ritual after ritual in her head. She wasn't paying attention.
[00:04:41] She had to leave the class constantly to do rituals in the bathroom. So we finally got an email from one of the teachers when we already know something was wrong. We're looking at the grades and contacting teachers and saying, what's going on here? We as parents have to be so aware. She was sitting in a classroom basically writing nothing when she was supposed to be writing something. And passes the paper.
[00:05:04] This student that was getting nineties and hundreds passes empty papers just because she was unable to write. There were so many things going on at the same time. Now she started sitting on her phone and moving the phone. That was all she did all day. She didn't talk. This is within a week. I couldn't pinpoint what it was. I actually mentioned to my husband, I said, this looks like OCD.
[00:05:31] Carole Blueweiss: I don't know anything about OCD.
[00:05:33] Rosemary Bushey: Neither did I.
[00:05:34] Carole Blueweiss: What does OCD stand for?
[00:05:36] Rosemary Bushey: So OCD is obsessive compulsive disorder. And I'm sure a lot of people don't actually really know what the disorder is. People say, oh, I'm a little bit OCD if they obsess about something of, they're extremely clean, but it's used very, very loosely. Real OCD is a serious mental disorder, but I really didn't know what OCD was.
[00:06:00] Carole Blueweiss: What did you see?
[00:06:01] Rosemary Bushey: She was arranging her shoes in certain way, and I would move them back. For instance, if they were by the door and they had to be in certain place, and if I moved them back, then five minutes later I would come back into her room and the shoes were back the same way she had arranged them before. I would ask her, why, why would she do that? That's not where the shoes belong. The shoes belong in your closet, or wherever else that I needed her to put them and she would refuse. So that's how that behavior started becoming as if it was more defiant behavior. She doesn't wanna move it, she just refused to.
[00:06:40] Carole Blueweiss: Right. And it doesn't sound like it had like a rationale. It just was.
[00:06:44] Rosemary Bushey: It was no rationale. It was no rationale whatsoever. There was no explanation, and then it was a lot of refusal.
[00:06:52] Carole Blueweiss: This is Lauren with her memory.
[00:06:56] Lauren Bushey: Ever since I was little, like, I don't know when it started, but yeah, when I was little, I always had like, you know, these urges to ritualize and when I felt uncomfortable, I'd have to fix things a certain way and I had these fears of like my family dying if I didn't move something a certain way in my room. I couldn't leave my room until I fixed everything a certain way, which took a while. So, yeah, and I remember that was a long time ago when I was little, so I don't know exactly when it started, but it's been a long time.
[00:07:26] Rosemary Bushey: I learned last year through our journey with this disease and while she was getting, she's been in different places receiving help, treatment, that sometimes that's part, refusal is part of OCD. Refusal. They refused to do something because something else would happen, and in her mind she kept thinking all these things that were going on in her mind, they were the obsessions. So I saw some of the compulsions. So with OCD, there are the compulsions and there are the obsessions.
[00:08:00] Carole Blueweiss: Can you explain what that means?
[00:08:02] Rosemary Bushey: So the compulsions are what they call the rituals, and those are the repetitions. So for some, for the best known form of OCD that I believe most people are familiar with are the washing of the hands, is the germophobic type.
[00:08:21] Carole Blueweiss: Was Lauren like that?
[00:08:22] Rosemary Bushey: No, she has a different type of OCD. She has a less common type of OCD. That's why it was so difficult to get to the, to really know it was OCD.
[00:08:35] Carole Blueweiss: When I think of OCD, one of the first things I think of is someone is very neat.
[00:08:40] Rosemary Bushey: No, she wasn't very neat. She wasn't very disorganized, but she was a perfectionist.
[00:08:45] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me what happened.
[00:08:47] Rosemary Bushey: So for a little bit longer than a year before we really knew what she had, but she refused to answer yes or no. So it would be simple questions like, Lauren, do you do your homework? Or Lauren, do you do you do certain thing? And she would go, I don't know. And so we were like, what do you mean you don't know?
[00:09:11] You either know or you either do your homework yes or you did not. And she would say, I don't know. Refused to say. It doesn't matter the question. She refused to say yes or no. That was part of her OCD because if she would say yes, then something would happen. And if she would say no, then maybe she would say yes. It very complicated and we didn't know. We had no clue that we were dealing with OCD, but it was exhausting.
[00:09:45] Carole Blueweiss: You asked her what she wanted for dinner. Was that a problem?
[00:09:48] Rosemary Bushey: Yes. You know, she would say, I don't know, because she couldn't commit to an answer.
[00:09:54] Carole Blueweiss: So it wasn't just yes and no. It was just having choices. She could not make a.
[00:09:57] Rosemary Bushey: It was choices. Exactly. Exactly. But yes and no were especially really bad for her. That's what we noticed. She just couldn't make a choice and everything would be, I don't know, leading toward basically what I called her crisis here, and I guess the stress also, she was taking all honors classes. Very good student and a lot of things started happening at the same time, but this was happening before. But not as pronounced.
[00:10:25] She would come home and it would be doing homework for hours and hours in a way that wasn't normal. Letters were bothering her, and if a letter wasn't completely perfect, she had to erase it and do it again. Numbers became an issue with math. There were all these little symptoms. We as parents saw a child that we said, what's going on here?
[00:10:48] But she was functioning. And then once she decided to do her homework, she will focus on doing it. But sometimes it would take her a long time, and it wasn't because she didn't have the understanding, it was because she just struggled with erasing, writing again, it has to be in certain way. There were a lot of things, and now that she can talk about it, there were a lot of things that bothered her.
[00:11:16] There were certain numbers in the clock, so another thing that she would do, very interesting, she would never read the clock. So if you'd ask her, Lauren, what time is it? I don't know. Clock is in front of you. So we started getting...the clock was in front of her and we're like, are you gonna tell me that you cannot?
[00:11:35] What time? I don't know. Refused to say the time and it was just challenging. I was already starting to put pieces together and say, I think we need to see, and we had just moved here also too, so there were too many things going on that even though I was trying to put pieces together, it seemed like a, well, where do we start?
[00:12:03] Because I kept seeing the compulsions, but I didn't see the obsessions. The obsessions were hidden, were exactly what the beliefs that she has of something happening. And it would take her forever to get out of the house because...now that she can tell me, she would like if I would be outside trying to drive her somewhere and I'd be calling her, Lauren, let's come, let's go.
[00:12:28] She would have to, if she come out, she will have to go back in again because she needed to pass close the door two times and then she had to touch every single thing in her bedroom. So these were the things we didn't see. Right before she left. So that's what she was doing, touching, making everything was touched in her bedroom.
[00:12:48] She needed to touch it and just move it one inch. If you dinner table, we were having dinner and if her sister or I or anybody would move her fork or her plate a little bit, to put a napkin or for no reason, just move it. She would have to move it back and then tell you, can you move it back?
[00:13:12] Why would you have to do that? Why do you do that? Why do you have to move that? And she had to repeat it three times until you repeat with her. There were bizarre behaviors. They were happening, but when she really became dysfunctional, it was severe. There were so many missed signals. We missed so much. And as parents, that was the most difficult thing I had to deal with.
[00:13:39] It was feeling guilty, the feeling of guilt because the signs and I kept saying, oh my God, how could I ignore the signs? I, they were there, but she was functional and all her doctors said, there's no way you could have known. There's no way anybody could have known she have OCD, but I kept blaming myself and saying, oh my God, I wish I would have found help before, but how could I? I had no clue.
[00:14:06] Even when we took her to see somebody when I was basically, she was already in crisis and not talking to anyone, even with so few people, and even these professionals didn't know what questions to ask. It was only until she was hospitalized that basically we got to the diagnosis of OCD.
[00:14:30] She started seventh grade here. A very, very good student. There were, you know, certain issues that were, they were mentioned by teachers. For instance, she was the last one packing her books and her pencils. And she was the, you know, the last one always packing and unpacking. And this is started basically in like sixth grade. That's when the teachers started noticing that, that she was taking her time.
[00:14:56] So everybody just took her for like, because Lauren always, she says, I don't like people telling me what to do. Strong personality. So defiant. So Lauren was actually taking her time, packing and unpacking because she needed the pencils needed to go in certain way. There was an order to the packing and the unpacking. So the eraser, for instance, needed to go first. Then the pencils, it couldn't be any other way and nobody could do it for her. So these were the kind of behaviors. They really looked like defiance.
[00:15:28] Carole Blueweiss: How did you respond as a mother? Because it, I would just lose my temper every single time.
[00:15:33] Rosemary Bushey: I was very patient for a while, and of course there were many times I would lose my temper. I would be, I honestly thought I was gonna go crazy. And when we just moved here, there was so much that I felt overwhelmed. I really felt I was gonna lose my mind. She would walk around the house, follow me, making me repeat things. And I didn't know. I just thought it was just she being, because the history of her having a very strong personality and we just thought she would come and I said, Lauren, can you please put your coat away?
[00:16:12] And she would come back to me and say, what do you say? I said, I told you to put your coat away. And then she will repeat again. No. What do you say? And I said, what's wrong with you? I just told you to put your coat away. No, what do you say? So basically what she was looking for me, it was, and this is what we learned from her OCD. She was looking for me to repeat the same, in the same tone of voice, exactly the same way I repeated before. And she have to make me repeat it. Three, it was usually three times. She said the number would change. There were some times if she needed to repeat or made me repeat things three times or sometimes it was five times.
[00:16:54] Carole Blueweiss: Did she ever tell you, Mom, I need you to repeat that? Or did you only learn that later after therapy?
[00:17:00] Rosemary Bushey: I only learned it later.
[00:17:02] Carole Blueweiss: She's able to know now how she was thinking.
[00:17:06] Rosemary Bushey: Yes, she's able to talk. So, when the crisis happened, which this is what is I think is very important for people to really know how somebody can deteriorate so fast within a matter of three weeks, four weeks.
[00:17:22] And that's why it was important when she was hospitalized that she had complete neurological evaluation because there, it could have been anything. They were thinking, well, what if it's something in her brain? A tumor. Thank God it wasn't.
[00:17:39] Carole Blueweiss: Wow. Tell the story of when she was one day she was home, and the next day she was in the hospital. What happened?
[00:17:46] Rosemary Bushey: That weekend of Thanksgiving of 2018, she got her first period, so she started crying the night before, Thursday, Thanksgiving day. Then Friday, she started calling my name and call my name. Mom, come here. She says she will call mom, mom, mom. Many times. This time she must have called mom and every time I would come into her room, she would look up at the ceiling.
[00:18:12] I left and I didn't go back into her room after going 10 times. Now here we are, hearing her scream my name, mom, mom, mom, for 35 minutes straight. Come here. There were a lot of things that we thought, oh my God, something is really wrong here. There was something really serious. That night, basically the cat came out of the bag.
[00:18:33] Still, we didn't know it was OCD, but we knew there was still something really wrong. At that point, we were seeing a psychiatry nurse who had a practice that was highly recommended by the school. She was in a waiting list to see other people. We didn't, nobody knew what she has, right? We just needed somebody to see what it was.
[00:18:52] Carole Blueweiss: Before she was hospitalized?
[00:18:53] Rosemary Bushey: Yeah. This is outpatient. This is within, you know, we're talking the end of November, so there were symptoms. But to get to the dysfunctionality part, it was fast. So at this point, when somebody gets so dysfunctional so quickly, everybody's thinking can be something neurological.
[00:19:12] What about an infection? What about? Nobody knew what it would be. There was a point in which she didn't function. She couldn't shower, she couldn't brush her teeth, but she didn't wanna talk at all. She wasn't, he was hardly communicating. Hardly communicating. She was constantly looking at herself in the mirror for making sure that she, her face wouldn't change or whatever transformation didn't happen.
[00:19:35] She spent most of her time avoiding any kind of conversation. So there was no communication, there was no way anybody could communicate with her. There was no conversation, no communication. Carole, we're saying, all of this that I'm telling you that happened like to the extreme happened within three, four weeks. So she ended up in the hospital.
[00:19:56] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me what happened.
[00:19:58] Rosemary Bushey: That weekend that she, her period arrived, it was like she could not control whatever. She's been hiding this OCD for a long time. She was very good at hiding it, and so now it's, she's crying uncontrollably. Now, the night before is the night that she's calling me.
[00:20:16] She couldn't get out of the bedroom because if she would get out, something would happen. So she's there uncontrollably screaming, mom, mom. So finally we come. She's extremely angry. Because now she say, look what happened. Look what happened. We don't know what's going on.
[00:20:34] She spent hours repeating the same sentence the following day. So this happened on Friday night. Saturday, she got her first period and now she's trying to do work in her Chromebook. And she spent in the same position without moving, repeating the same sentence for about an hour, an hour and a half. And we kept telling her, let's get up. Let's do this. The only thing she was basically doing was looking at her phone and moving around the house, just back and forth, not talking to anybody.
[00:21:10] The only thing she was doing was eating. It was a very drastic change. Then got to the point where she couldn't dress herself. She couldn't choose what to put on. She was overwhelmed by choosing what to wear. She would be in a very stiff position. She couldn't move her legs. She had to be stiff. It was extremely weird, bizarre behavior.
[00:21:38] And we have to dress her, but she couldn't help. So if she moved a little bit her leg trying to help with her jeans, then we have to take the jeans again and we have to start again so that she wouldn't scream and she will get into a panic and anxiety. OCD is together with anxiety disorders. It's a lot of anxiety.
[00:21:59] Then, she couldn't brush her teeth because she wasn't supposed to move her arm. She became basically OCD took over her. The obsessive compulsive behavior, the thoughts, the invasive thoughts were all she did. She, the rituals were constant. She now, she couldn't do anything. She couldn't shower, she couldn't do anything.
[00:22:23] We have to pass, like even sometimes with eating, if she was having an obsessive thought, an invasive thought at the moment that she was gonna grab the milk for her cereal, now she couldn't have it. Now I have to pour the cereal. So there was a point where we were doing everything for her, including helping her in the shower. She couldn't get out. She's like, I cannot get out of bed.
[00:22:45] Carole Blueweiss: Out of the shower?
[00:22:47] Rosemary Bushey: Out of the shower, out of the bed.
[00:22:48] Carole Blueweiss: How do you interpret what she was thinking or what was going on when her limbs were stiff and she wasn't moving her body? What was that about?
[00:22:58] Rosemary Bushey: I had no idea. I interpreted as she's sick. There was something really bad happening with her. My heart was broken. My heart was so broken. I'm sorry. I feel like I'm just gonna start.
[00:23:11] Carole Blueweiss: It's okay.
[00:23:12] Rosemary Bushey: Yes. Thinking about it, it was, my heart was so broken. I had to go and find counseling.
[00:23:17] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, I bet. I hope so.
[00:23:19] Rosemary Bushey: I couldn't stop crying. We were both, we didn't know what to do. We took her to her doctor. And her doctor, she couldn't answer the question. She couldn't write. Her pediatrician said she's in great distress and I don't know what it is. It's nothing physical. She's okay. Unless it's, we're gonna put her for a neurologist right away because that's the only explanation. It could have been something about it seems like at the hormones.
[00:23:48] And that's it's, a lot of studies right now. I'm very interested on many of them, and I've been talking to a lot of psychiatrists about the connection between hormones and mental illness. Every time her period is approaching, her OCD gets worse. So it is definitely a connection there. That was one of the treatments that were tried last year, put her on the birth control pill, but we didn't see any difference.
[00:24:16] So, it's been experimenting with a lot of drugs. We've been experimenting with a lot of different treatments for her OCD. She's, my God, she's so much better now. She's, is nothing like the kid that we took to Boston Children's Hospital ER. I'm sharing this because this is the type of OCD that probably people don't even know.
[00:24:38] She knew exactly what she was doing. Those were all compulsions and obsessions and she understands that it was part of the, her part of the obsessions. It was her mind playing her tricks. She just didn't know it then. Until she basically started going through OCD treatment.
[00:24:59] To talk a little bit about the treatment she's seen an OCD psychiatrist right now. There is the OCD International Foundation, which is a very, very good resource for, you know, for parents who had children with OCD. And her doctor is part of this, is one of the best OCD doctors here, actually, if not the only OCD specialist in this area. She's in very good hands right now.
[00:25:26] Carole Blueweiss: What's helped her the most?
[00:25:28] Rosemary Bushey: So far was helping...it's been a long journey. So she came out of the hospital in January last year with an OCD diagnosis and basically she needed to be again hospitalized for, in an OCD hospital, an OCD center. There is Bradley, Rhode Island, which is an OCD facility, Bradley Hospital, and there is also McLeans.
[00:25:56] McLeans is in Massachusetts. Long waiting list. I'm talking, we've been in waiting for McLean for a year and now the pandemic happened and just, it's almost impossible to get a bed in these hospitals. McLeans is the oldest OCD hospital and, Rogers, she actually been to some of the best.
[00:26:18] Last year, she went to Rogers, which is in Wisconsin. This was OCD and anxiety hospital. So basically what has helped her is being with other people, being treated by people who specialize treating OCD. And being away. We went away to Rhode Island. It was difficult for her to go to a residential at the beginning because of her fear of being alone and really was very challenging.
[00:26:44] So I decided to go with her so that she could be only six hours a day, outpatient in Bradley Hospital. And it helped a lot. It helped a lot. The fact that she was working with OCD psychiatrists, OCD especially.
[00:26:59] Carole Blueweiss: Did you move for that?
[00:27:00] Rosemary Bushey: I moved to live with her for over two months.
[00:27:03] Carole Blueweiss: How did you live, in a Airbnb?
[00:27:05] Rosemary Bushey: Believe it or not, we actually stayed at Ronald McDonald's. Ronald McDonald House is fantastic. It is amazing what they do for families. I was looking for apartments at the beginning and thinking, oh my God. I had to quit my job to take care of her when she came out of the hospital. She couldn't go to school.
[00:27:23] Carole Blueweiss: She only got to see the psychiatrist and the psychologist after the hospitalization. Is that right?
[00:27:29] Rosemary Bushey: Yes, that's right. Before that, she was seeing a nurse practitioner in psychiatry.
[00:27:34] Carole Blueweiss: What was the nurse practitioner saying?
[00:27:35] Rosemary Bushey: So with OCD, you really have to know there's OCD, but a lot of practitioners don't have experience with OCD. So then they would know that there is other forms of OCD.
[00:27:48] Carole Blueweiss: How does that make you feel that she is now with a label of OCD?
[00:27:52] Rosemary Bushey: Well, I'm Hispanic, right? And especially for Hispanic people, it is a huge stigma, mental illness. They don't talk about mental illness. We can say in general, I mean, for Hispanics, it's very difficult. I know there is stereotypes here in this country too, and there's a lot of stigma related to mental illness and I think changes need to happen. I was one of those people who really didn't really believe in depression, for instance. To me, I've always been a runner. So to me it's like, oh, well you feel a little bit, you know, under the blues or you feel a little bit sad. You just put on your pair of sneakers and you go for a run and you feel fantastic. Right?
[00:28:32] That's how I used to think. So she takes SSRIs which are serotonin, basically, and nobody knows the cause of OCD. But there is research that points out where the serotonin uptake pathways and so that's why they recommend serotonin with her antidepressants.
[00:28:57] Carole Blueweiss: Is she on one medication or is she on like a couple?
[00:29:00] Rosemary Bushey: She's on one medication right now, but there was a time in which she was on a lot of medications. And that has been my mission. I'm very happy she's only on one right now. They put her on antipsychotics to try to make her more coherent. We're talking a child who was not talking. So with that, we actually saw immediately a difference.
[00:29:22] It took a while for her to take the medication because now OCD was telling her she couldn't take it either. So it was a challenge. She refused to take them and we couldn't force her because now she started getting suspicious, my daughter, getting suspicious they were gonna hide it in her food, and we were afraid she was gonna stop eating.
[00:29:40] Antipsychotics are used in conjunction with SSRIs, with antidepressants, as augmentation therapy. Okay?
[00:29:52] Carole Blueweiss: What does that mean?
[00:29:53] Rosemary Bushey: Augmentation therapy means to enhance the effects of the antidepressants. The pharmaco treatment for OCD is SSRIs in high dose, so higher than is used for depression. Antipsychotic has many secondary effects and I really didn't want her on an antipsychotic, but they wanted to keep her to because that was one of the medications. I'm like, oh gosh, I really don't want her on antipsychotic, because a lot of the antipsychotics also really affects insulin and therefore a lot of the people who are on antipsychotics end up craving a lot of carbohydrates and, you know, sugars.
[00:30:38] Now, Lauren has obsessions about transformation. Now, she was obsessing, this is when she was in Bradley, about gaining weight. Okay? And now we don't wanna create another disorder, which is very connected. A lot of people who suffer from OCD, they have what they call comorbid disorders they develop. They can develop anorexia and other disorders go together.
[00:31:04] So here we are worrying about, oh my God, now we know she's gonna start obsessing about it because that she was already watching what she was eating. So it was great to have a female psychiatrist, and first she put her on metformin, which is for diabetics to try to offset the insulin, the effects of the antipsychotic.
[00:31:29] And so one of the things as a parent, and I could say to any parent, we are the best advocates for our children.
[00:31:35] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me more about that.
[00:31:37] Rosemary Bushey: I kept a journal of every single medication, what changes I saw in my daughter, what changes I did not see. And I would advocate for my kid because as a parent, and a lot of her doctors were very respectful of this, and they agree with me, they say, yes, nobody knows your child better than you.
[00:32:02] I knew exactly what her reactions, what her symptoms look like. So if I disagree with a medication or I thought a medication wasn't doing it was always gonna do more harm than benefit, I would definitely discuss it with doctors and say, I want her off this medication. So why see that we have her in a medication it's gonna possibly gonna create another problem that has side effects? And for what if it's not doing absolutely anything. We took her off. She's the same.
[00:32:36] You asked me before what has helped a lot. I think cognitive behavioral therapy is the therapy of choice for OCD and anxiety disorder and other phobias. They basically learn about these irrational thoughts. So it works a lot for anxiety and a lot of phobias and for with OCDs about trying to basically see how these irrational thoughts don't make any sense and how those things are not gonna happen, and feel the discomfort. She went to Rogers and stayed there for over two months as well, in Wisconsin. That's what they do. They do exposures, they do flooding. They do all these techniques.
[00:33:23] Carole Blueweiss: I asked Lauren about her experience.
[00:33:26] Lauren Bushey: Exposure therapy is basically facing your fears. So let's say someone was scared of germs and catching an illness, they would, and they couldn't touch any public things, like they had to wear gloves every time they opened a door.
[00:33:42] So basically they'd have to open the door without any gloves and they could not wash their hands after or do some sort of ritual that they would usually do, and they'd have to just sit with that uncomfortable feeling and kind of welcome it in a way. Yeah. And then if you keep doing that, then you'll start to notice that the OCD has less of a hold on you, because you you keep learning, it doesn't bother you as much.
[00:34:11] Rosemary Bushey: It was so good to get her back. I feel when OCD took a hold of her, she was a whole different child. As soon as she came back from the residential program at Rogers, she was ready to start socializing, which is important. And then Covid happened.
[00:34:32] Lauren Bushey: It's very isolating. You know, kids like to socialize, you know, and school's like a big outlet for them to talk with friends and meet people, you know. And not going to school is just, it's very, very isolating.
[00:34:48] Rosemary Bushey: [music playing] She loves dancing and singing. Thank God she's still taking voice lessons on the phone. So online with her instructor. And we can see how she struggles now and she realizes her struggles. She knows exactly what she has. She has very good insight and she always did. She always had good insight.
[00:35:19] One of the things I noticed with her when she came back from Rogers, and every time she's been back from these facilities, is a level of maturity that this child has. She is so mature and so knowledgeable about her disorder that it's, it really makes me proud, makes me very, very proud.
[00:35:42] She's always been extremely smart. She was in advanced math, advanced, all honors classes. She's not in honors classes anymore. We didn't want that kind of stress. Normal classes is fine. We want to maintain the level of stress very low because the stress really, really triggers her.
[00:36:00] Carole Blueweiss: Do you notice that if stress affects?
[00:36:03] Lauren Bushey: Oh yeah.
[00:36:03] Carole Blueweiss: OCD or your mental health or?
[00:36:06] Lauren Bushey: Definitely.
[00:36:07] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me a little bit about that.
[00:36:10] Lauren Bushey: So tomorrow I'm going back to school, and I haven't been to school in a while. So, tomorrow, I know for sure that my OCD is gonna be at a high, because I've noticed in the past on like first days of school or like important events, I get, you know, normal stressed out for that.
[00:36:30] But the OCD kind of feeds off of the stress. So whenever I'm stressed out about something else, the OCD just gets much worse.
[00:36:38] Carole Blueweiss: Are there any other, let's say complementary or alternative therapies that you looked into at all?
[00:36:46] Rosemary Bushey: Diet. Nutrition has been very important. I believe the plant-based diet, which I am, I'm a vegan. And I notice a lot of the changes especially, you know, just her skin, a lot of things that she would worry about that are helping her and she feels better. She feels good about what she's putting in her body. There is not a lot of studies. I know that there is a big connection between nutrition, especially, you know, the gut and mental illness. A whole bunch of research be now it's a whole new area. So that's something I am doing my own personal research with her, which is nutrition.
[00:37:27] Carole Blueweiss: What do you do to take care of yourself?
[00:37:30] Rosemary Bushey: I run, I enjoy cooking. I enjoy doing the school work, and I do a plant-based nutrition for my entire family and for myself. I actually create a lot of recipes and I have an Instagram page and which that keeps me really busy, where I post my vegan meals, which I love.
[00:37:52] Carole Blueweiss: Tell everybody what, where they can find all those amazing recipes.
[00:37:55] Rosemary Bushey: My recipes are on Instagram and it's called Simply Veggielicious.
[00:38:00] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me how that makes you happy.
[00:38:01] Rosemary Bushey: Finally, when I became a vegan, it just gave me a really, an amazing sense of happiness. I don't know how to explain that. Inner happiness. I felt that finally I was, my beliefs were aligned with my nutrition, with my choices. It gives me a sense of peace and I love sharing everything that I created. Been very important also for my daughter because every now and then she looks at my page and this is a way that we can bond.
[00:38:33] We talk a lot. She, you know, I put her sometimes to taste my meals. She feels very healthy. My food is awesome, and it really gives me a sense of happiness. One of the things I really wanna explore and the connection with between mental health and nutrition.
[00:38:53] Carole Blueweiss: What do you think about your mom's cooking?
[00:38:55] Lauren Bushey: I really love her cooking. It's so good.
[00:38:58] Carole Blueweiss: Are you a vegetarian or is that what she is?
[00:39:01] Lauren Bushey: She's a vegan. For the most part, since she cooks most of our meals, we are like 70% vegan, I guess. I think I wanna start getting more into that.
[00:39:12] Carole Blueweiss: Why would you wanna go more towards vegan? Do you feel like it might make a difference on how you feel physically, or you're just curious or?
[00:39:19] Lauren Bushey: First of all, why I feel like it's just better for the environment and for the animals, but also I feel like yes, it is better for like my physical health and also definitely my mental health, my OCD. I feel like the foods that are in the vegan cuisine are much better for your mental health, I think, and I feel like it could make a difference with my OCD and it might be worth a try.
[00:39:44] Carole Blueweiss: If you were to have one piece of advice for parents out there who are dealing with a child who has mental illness or may have mental illness, what is the one key piece of advice you would give?
[00:39:56] Rosemary Bushey: Trust your gut. I know it's difficult sometimes to trust your gut as a parent. You know your child more than anybody else. If you think that that treatment is no for your child or you don't see any benefit, then don't do it. Advocate in the sense of you are, that you discuss things with their doctors.
[00:40:21] Don't just believe. Don't just believe it. Advocate in the schools. Also network with other parents. Just knowing the other parents are going through the same or similar situations can be very, very comforting. It can help a lot. I think we need to tell our children that it is okay. The brain is just like any other organ, right?
[00:40:47] They are no different because of that, they simply have a different challenge. There's nothing to be ashamed, and that's what I tell my child. I tell her, you have to be empower of know what you have, and empower yourself. And empower others.
[00:41:04] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you so much.
[00:41:06] Rosemary Bushey: You're welcome. You are very welcome. I hope it really helps other people, other parents face those challenges and don't be afraid and teach our children that having mental illness is nothing to be embarrassed about.
[00:41:23] Lauren Bushey: Well, I think the biggest step is to stop using, to take other people's help. You know, at first I was refusing to do anything. I was refusing to take my medicine because I was too scared. You have to take, like even just the smallest steps can make such a big difference. You know, you have to think of like the future you want for yourself.
[00:41:44] Like, you have to think about how it's going to help you in the end. Like, it might hurt now and it might be painful to push yourself, but in the end you're gonna be so much better than you are now. You just have to think of that future you.
[00:42:01] Carole Blueweiss: From a parent's point of view, it's like, ugh, my kid is being stubborn. She's not...I'm just, I'm talking for myself. Like, you know, thinking of times your teenage child, they're almost grownups and if they refuse, there's, that's very difficult to make a teenager do something they don't wanna do. What helped you to see that it's okay to, it sounds like there was a lot of fear involved, but something inside of you realized at some point that if you do it, it might actually help?
[00:42:30] Lauren Bushey: When I was in the hospital, they were trying to get me to take medicine and they said it would help me so much more, but I just, my OCD scared me too much into taking it. But I stayed there for long, like a longer time, just days and days and with no progress, not taking the medicine. And I just realized like the longer I put off taking the medicine, like I'm going to eventually have to take the medicine to get better. So the longer I push it off, the harder it's gonna be for me to take it. So I just, you know, I just had to take the medicine and move on. Like, I just had to accept help.
[00:43:06] Carole Blueweiss: Do you remember when you started to feel like something wasn't right or did it just kind of just blow up on you? Like, or something in between?
[00:43:14] Lauren Bushey: In between. It did blow up on me, but I always struggled with my OCD, so I always knew something was wrong, but it was so normal for me. So I was kind of used to it, but then it just blew up out of the blue. Yeah.
[00:43:30] Carole Blueweiss: Do you have any advice for parents out there who are dealing with a child that is going through a tough time? You know, with mental health?
[00:43:38] Lauren Bushey: If you see the signs early on, I know it's sometimes hard to figure out like what's going on with your child at first. You might see some weird signs of something wrong, but you're not sure if it's just a normal behavior or it's related to something bigger. But I think like, definitely try to, you know, nip it from the start. Because I think waiting to kind of figure it out is just only going to make it worse. Yeah.
[00:44:08] Carole Blueweiss: Do you have advice for kids about stuff you've learned from your experience?
[00:44:14] Lauren Bushey: You, the main part is you have to help yourself and you have to work towards bettering yourself. You know, you can't really give up.
[00:44:21] Carole Blueweiss: And do you notice that it happens like certain times of the month with that it's related to menstruation? Do you think that that's, your mom mentioned that, so that's why I ask.
[00:44:31] Lauren Bushey: Mm-hmm. I've noticed the pattern every time. It's around that time of the month. Like it, my OCD just heightens so much more. Yeah. It really gets worse. So, and then after it's just like a relief. It's kind of going down a bit. So yeah, it definitely is related to that.
[00:44:53] Carole Blueweiss: And has the therapy that you've been having, has that helped you, do you think?
[00:44:57] Lauren Bushey: With my OCD, I think I've gotten all the outside help I need. I think at this point, what I need to get better is I have to do exposures myself. So the therapy isn't really helping me. It's just more like an outlet for me to talk to someone who understands.
[00:45:16] Carole Blueweiss: So do you feel like at one point you remember surrendering to that?
[00:45:21] Lauren Bushey: So when I went to Rogers in Wisconsin, it's an OCD and anxiety center for...you stay there. It's a residential for treatment. They really wanted me to go and I...part of me did wanna go, but also I didn't wanna have to leave my family and my house and my friends to go to a place I didn't know.
[00:45:47] But, you know, they said it would be good for me. You know, at first I was like, you have no idea. You don't really know what OCD is. You don't know how it is for me. And I just thought they were just trying to find any place they could to get me out of their hair, I guess. But, you know, no, I realized later that that was the best place for me to go.
[00:46:09] And, you know, they sacrificed a lot for me to, you know, get help. The help I needed. And yeah, I realized that they only wanted to do the best for me. So, yeah.
[00:46:21] Carole Blueweiss: So that place you found comfort and you found that they cared and you understood eventually that that was a place that could give you some?
[00:46:31] Lauren Bushey: Yeah.
[00:46:32] Carole Blueweiss: Sounds like you learned a lot there.
[00:46:34] Lauren Bushey: Yeah, I learned a lot about my OCD and how it works.
[00:46:36] Carole Blueweiss: And do you, you used the word learning, which is really interesting. Do you think that a lot of this is about learning or relearning or unlearning?
[00:46:45] Lauren Bushey: Yeah. You have to learn to grow out of those habits you've become used to for so long. You have to kinda reteach your brain how to work. It's really, yeah, it's really hopeful to know that like you can do something about it. It's really, really hard and difficult. But if you really push yourself, you can change, yeah, how your brain works.
[00:47:07] Carole Blueweiss: Is there anything you wanna say?
[00:47:10] Lauren Bushey: At least for the kids that are struggling with this, you know, trust your parents. They're trying to help you. You know, they're just trying to get the best help for you and they're trying to figure out what's going on. So, you know, just trust that they have the best intentions and, you know, like you might feel like, ugh, I really don't wanna go to this place to get help. I really don't wanna do this. You guys just, you guys just don't understand. Just, you know, just trust them.
[00:47:41] Just trust that it's gonna be a good thing for you. Gives you more power over your mental illness by feeling free to talk about it with other people. Like definitely now in this generation, I feel like mental health is a, it's not so closeted. People are more open about it and it's more accepted. I feel like that helps a little bit.
[00:48:02] Carole Blueweiss: Thanks Lauren, so much. As I said in the beginning, I think the most powerful thing is to hear directly from people. Whether it's your parents or you yourself that have experienced these things, and I just wanna thank you so much from the bottom of my heart and just tell you how much I admire your courage and your generosity just to wanna help other people.
[00:48:24] And I know there's gonna be people that hear you and will get a lot of strength and courage from you. It involves some vulnerability, as you know, like to let yourself talk like you did tonight. I just wanna thank you a lot.
[00:48:39] Let's hear Lauren's beautiful voice as she sings part of this song by Billy Eilish called, "idontwannabeyouanymore."
[00:48:48] Lauren Bushey: [singing, with piano] Would you break it, if you're honest?
[00:48:53] Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before
[00:49:04] I don't wanna be you
[00:49:12] I don't wanna be you
[00:49:20] I don't wanna be you anymore
[00:49:39] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all our other episodes. Visit caroleblueweiss.com. If you like what you are hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month.