So, for a while I've been trying to decide whether this would be more suited for the anxiety, depression or OCD forum. I decided on here because anxiety and depression are more the context and OCD is what I think the issue is.

So, when I first joined senior school, I started becoming obsessed with contamination. It was sometimes hard to even open a door. I had other unpleasant thoughts that wouldn't leave my head, but I don't/didn't tell anyone about them because people might think I'm perverted/weird/violent, even though I'm asexual and struggle to even kill a mosquito. But, I was able to function and carried on through everyday life, albeit with dry hands from the amount of hand sanitizer I used. I knew that it was unreasonable to think I'd get the horrible disease I'd just learned about in biology from picking something off the floor that had been there for half a second, but I didn't feel completely safe until I made it to the nearest toilet or doused my hands in hand gel. I got a bit better over the years, I think joining the gardening club might've helped with that, but the obsessions made a comeback when there was a stomach bug outbreak at the end of last year. I constantly worried I was coming down with the illness and avoided certain places at all costs. It took ages to use the toilet because there were only a select few that my brain deemed as clean, and they were spread far and wide across a massive campus. I used a lot of hand sanitizer and now have the old door touching problem again, hooray.

But enough about me, that's not who I came to talk about. So, I have a little brother whom I love very much. Earlier last year, we were in the car back from school and he was being yelled at for washing his laptop case because he was near someone with muddy trousers. It turns out that he had started obsessing over contamination. I gave him some hand sanitizer, because that always helped me and it's far better for cleaning stuff that have been on the ground, and we went on with the autumn term with no further incidents of note. Then when the Christmas holidays came, it became apparent how much he washed his hands after the smallest things. A few weeks ago we were staying at our grandmother's house and he accidentally flooded the toilet. Later he realised that the tip of his coat sleeve might have touched some toilet water and he freaked out. He cried and protested loudly when I suggested wearing it or putting it in his bag on the way back. We did come to a solution, put it in a plastic bag to take home and wait until someone can wash it. A couple days later, my mum used some of her industrial grade antibacterial wipes on it, but he still refused to wear the coat. So my dad washed it and it took two days to dry. Whilst this was going on, they resorted to seemingly their favourite way to try and talk some sense into us when we're dealing with anxieties. Yelling at us. I'm writing this after waking up to my dad calling my brother "such a pain in the arse" and my mum telling him that he's "building your own cage."

Don't get me wrong, I have pretty good parents. We usually get along well and they accept (most of) our ADHD. I know they're doing this out of worry for my brother but it's so destructive. I know from experience. The exact same thing happened when it came out that I had a phobia of needles. I hardly ever brought it up because whenever I did I would get screamed at for "convincing myself". They'd also joke about it. I'm pretty sure it was a contributing factor to my depression (which to them is just teenage angst). I even talked to a therapist about it and they'd talked to my parents. They seemed to understand and accept me and we even had a solution planned. But a couple months later it was back to the same old yelling, with us having got none of the (quite simple may I add) solution done.

I've never been able to ask my brother directly whether he has any insight on his issues, or whether he genuinely believes that his coat is contaminated and it's not just intrusive thoughts yet. My parents keep trying to show him videos of people from old times walking around in dirty streets and they were suggesting getting him to help clean the toilets. This is sort of like how they were saying they would try and have me try to get an injection every year until I wasn't scared anymore. But, without help, regularly triggering such fears makes them worse. That's why it's a problem. Adding logic to the situation (e.g "it doesn't hurt at all" or "we've cleaned it three times already") doesn't help. I also feel incredibly guilty over the fact that I partly blame myself for my brother being this way because I didn't keep my tendencies covered up enough and to quote my parents "Your brother looks up to you. He will copy things that you do, so set a good example."

I know my brother would never go to a councillor (too many years of bad learning support for the wrong condition takes it's toll) and even if someone professional told my parents, it would probably be only a few months before they went back to their old ways. So, how can I get help for my brother and get my parents to understand that yelling at the problem and trying to add logic to them will not help? I'm worried that directly confronting them about it would lead to more yelling and accusations of being a hypochondriac (to be fair, my brain loves to jump to conclusions about diseases and it takes a great deal of effort to convince it otherwise, even though I know it's not right).