OCD obssessive compulsive disorder

What is OCD?
A friends says her brother suffers from it and the way she describes it sounds awful. It sounds like someone has fixed paranoid beliefs that nobody can talk any sense to.
Does anybody know what causes or triggers it? Can someone be delivered or do meds help?
How do you pray for someone with this?

My words in blue...

I worked in behavior health for 23 years first as a practitioner and then as a CEO.

"Obsessive Compulsive Disorder"

Obsessions are resident in a person's thoughts. They cannot stop thinking about an object or an event. Thoughts like "Are my hands clean enough?" "Did I forget to turn off the stove?" "Will I be found to be a fraud at my job today?" etc.

Compulsions are behaviors that a person feels they must complete before moving on. Technically, these behaviors must also diminish a person's quality of life: turning off the stove 10 times before believing it is off, checking the expiration of food multiple times before eating it, locking the apartment door many times over before leaving, etc.

Triggers are atypical stressors or typical stressors that increase in severity and frequency.

Yes, people can be delivered from it. The disorder has its roots in fear and self-protection. Often you will find a traumatic event, or a series of events, that formed the person's disorder. Medication can help with the symptoms but not with the root of the trauma.

How to pray depends upon how much you know about them. Pray for peace (the destruction of chaos) and for understanding and for healing. Conventional therapy will help them cope but only the Truth will set them free.

I had a friend with OCD. One of the most common examples they showed was when putting on a hoodie, they were turn it inside out and back. Doing this 3-4 times every time they put wanted to put it on. There would be occasions where the ritual didn't 'work' and they'd keep doing it. If i were there they'd ask me to reassure them they wouldn't die if they stopped and put it on.
Logically they knew it made no sense, but they were unable to convince themselves of it.
Other issues could last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. And for people of a religious persuasion it can often add more problems for them. My friend, for example, didn't believe someone could lose their salvation, yet their OCD would kick in and they would be in a near panic believing they lost theirs. Mostly trying to discuss it with them, to rationalize it, didn't work, and sometimes made it worse. At times this lasted days, causing great anxiety in them.

In some cases you may have to avoid certain types of discussions even. Merely mentioning things could trigger them. It's very much a 'let them handle it themselves, unless they ask for help'. And even if they ask for help, they usually can only handle it in short doses before telling you to stop. And if that's the case, stop immediately.
Typically your goal is to help them after an episode, to calm down, not help them through the episode, where you'll make it worse.

thanks
well I dont know too much about it, just is seems difficult for the family.

friend says her brother got married and had children but the OCD got too much and now the (ex?) wife and children went back to their own country and he wants to go over there but doesnt seem to have any practical way of even getting there or a even a job to support them.

?!
she said hes been that way since his uni days, so not sure what happened there, maybe stress or trauma.
Currently hes boarding somewhere and seems to have found a church. She says hes been prayed of rmany times and gone to healing services, deliverances etc. He doesnt want to take meds. He left the family with just the clothes on his back. He seems much happier, she says, away from the blood family but desperately wanting to see his ex wife and kids.

like he can just jump on an airplane with no plan.

Almost sounds like he's prone to Mania or manic episodes. That's when one acts impulsively. It's tough to know without a proper history. Given the onset (college) I wonder about drug use, even once can open the mind to demonic activity. There is little reason to not take medication in the short run. It can help rest the mind, much like a cast on a broken bone. Also, a lot of deliverance doesn't work because they minister doesn't address how the person ratified the lies of the enemy by their own behaviors.

yea I dont know much more.
Drugs can be the gateway to many disorders. Though if hes averse to taking meds, it suggests maybe he wasnt that into drugs? . Maybe there was some occult activity I dont know. The family belonged to an Anglican church but the church her brother now goes to is Baptist. Friends says thats a good thing cos before he wasnt really into her families church or would go to some way out pentecostal type ones.

Friend said her brother is talking of returning home but the rest of her family dont want him back (she says was a relief when he went away)

and not sure his ex wife and children want him going over there either...not sure what anyone can do for him, its not like mental hospitals can do much but contain a person for a couple of weeks when they have a crisis.
But OCD is ongoing isnt it? And if hes resistant to meds, he wont like going to a mental hosptial as the only treatment they give there would be meds.

Im not sure what other therapy there is to OCD. Unless theres special OCD clinics or something.

I suppose if he talks to the right person and opens up to them, maybe the trauma will be released...but its finding that right person isnt it?

I have undiagnosed OCD. My family knows this. I am especially paranoid when it comes to cleanliness, order and hygiene. Not too long ago I stopped to ask God if this was wrong. Sure enough the Lord answered me: I was enlightened and convicted when reading the laws of clean and unclean throughout the book of Leviticus.

oh what do you think started this? Or when did the paranoia start...? Was there something that badly affected you due to bad hygiene or being unclean do you think?