At InStride Health, we have the privilege of walking alongside young people and their families as they navigate anxiety and OCD. Meaningful progress, however, rarely happens in isolation. While individual sessions are important, lasting change is most often achieved when everyone in a child’s support system works together toward shared goals. That’s where the collaboration between the child, caregivers, the care team, and other key adults becomes the heartbeat of treatment.

The “Surround Sound” Approach

To really understand a young person’s world and provide optimal care, we need a comprehensive  understanding of the individual and an aligned approach. At InStride, we take a systems-based approach that intentionally engages and activates the important adults in a young person’s life, like caregivers, school staff, and pediatricians. We call this our “surround sound” approach. Just like surround sound audio creates an immersive experience by projecting the same consistent sound from all around the listener, we ensure that the important adults in a child or teen’s life are working together and responding consistently to the child’s anxiety and/or OCD.

At the center of this approach is a coordinated care team that includes caregivers and InStride providers working together to support the young person:

• The Therapist: serves as the care team “quarterback,” setting the treatment plan, teaching new skills, and guiding the patient to confront fears and break the cycle of avoidance.
• The Exposure Coach: helps the individual put those skills into action through motivation building, accountability, and real-world skills and exposure practice.
• The Psychiatrist: provides medication management, if needed, to support the biological side of treatment. 
• The Caregiver(s): support skills practice at home and build their own skills to support lasting change.

Caregivers: The Bridge to Real Life

Treatment involves many moving parts, from individual therapy and coaching to psychiatric services and peer exposure groups. But caregivers provide the continuity that makes these skills stick. Caregivers act as the bridge that carries tools from the session into the real world, ensuring that progress doesn’t stop when the video call ends. By helping their child practice strategies at the dinner table or reinforcing brave behavior during the morning bus ride, caregivers transform clinical concepts into daily habits.

To truly tailor care, we also rely on ongoing communication from caregivers. Caregivers aren’t just observing treatment; they are an active partner sharing important observations about patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. When caregivers tell us what’s really happening, during school transitions, family routines, or difficult moments, we can adjust the treatment plan to reflect reality, not just what happens in sessions. This alignment turns treatment from a checklist of appointments into a shared mission.

Shifting the System

Empowering caregivers to take an active role is a cornerstone of our approach at InStride. Anxiety and OCD can quietly take charge of a household, shaping family routines and decisions in ways that feel protective, like ordering for a child who is afraid to speak or checking locks repeatedly, but actually reinforce fear and avoidance. We call this family accommodation.While these actions provide immediate relief for the young person, they feed the anxiety or OCD over time. 

We work with caregivers to identify these patterns and shift them. Instead of arranging daily life to avoid distress, we give families the tools to validate their child’s feelings, reduce and eventually eliminate accommodations, and encourage them to face their fears. This shift allows the family to stop “walking on eggshells” and empowers the young person to learn that they can handle hard things. The result? Anxiety or OCD is evicted from the driver’s seat, and the child or teen takes the wheel, supported by a family that knows exactly how to help them navigate the road ahead.

Creating Lasting Change

At Instride, we know that when we combine our clinical tools with caregivers’ unique insight and reinforcement of skills at home, things really start to click. By working as one team, we ensure that progress sticks, helping young people build futures where they are in charge, not their anxiety or OCD.