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We met with good friends for a picnic at the edge of the forest. Our 8-year-old son was playing in the nearby woods with two girls of the family (about 10 and 5 years old) and they were supposed to be back in half an hour for lunch.

Ninety minutes passed during which they did not come and the rest of us were eating and telling stories. After lunch, we adults became increasingly worried and started searching the small wooded area, calling and searching loudly for them. But there was no trace to be found. After some more bigger search circles we found them in the little forest after all. The girl said they had been there the whole time, picking blackberries and not hearing our calls.

Now our son took us directly a piece aside. He was all upset and said that this was not true and that they had been out all the time, but that he should not tell. Here's what happened in the two hours they were away: First, the older girl wanted to see his school, which was a few hundred meters away. So the three of them walked to the school. Then she wanted to go to a garden near our home, which was about 2 kilometers away. Our son didn't want all this, but couldn't stop the older girl, and at the same time didn't want to let the two of them run off on their own, because they might have gotten lost. So he accompanied them, even though they were doing this behind us parents' backs and he had never been away for so long and so far without an adult chaperone - not to mention not telling anyone.

So it was a highly stressful situation for him to be exposed to in a completely unexpected and isolating way, since he had never been incited by anyone to do something like this "dare" or "forbidden adventure" and simply didn't know that something like this could happen. He cried when he told this and was stressed to the highest degree. He also couldn't think of anything else the rest of the afternoon, and wanted to be distracted all the time so he wouldn't have to think about this horrible situation for him.

All of these are very clear signs of compulsive thinking of an intense conflict active phase that was hard to miss. So we were thinking about how to help him resolve it as quickly as possible so that the intensity would not build up too much of a conflict mass that would then lead to greater symptoms.

He also said he never wanted to see the girl again. Since the family lives very far away anyway, there were no plans to meet anytime soon. So we assured him that we would not see our friends again for a long time, and that he would indeed never need to see the girl again as long as he did not want to. This helped him to calm down. In addition, we cuddled with him a lot so that he could feel that we were with him again and taking care of him. Now we were anxious to see what symptoms we could expect, as we could not yet say for sure with what conflict content he had perceived the situation.

In the early evening a rash with many reddish spots and areas appeared all over his back (see photo, it was taken when the symptoms just started). So he had experienced a separation conflict with one or both of the following variants:

Either he wanted to be separated from the girl and not be with her (i.e., an "unwanted contact, imposed") and could not "shake her off", and/or he felt an unwanted separation conflict with us parents ("wanted contact, separated").

The localization at the back is typical when things happen "behind the back", that is, when something happens secretly and without permission. In this case, the separation situation happened behind the back of us parents without our knowledge, which is why his brain localized it at the back. Also the "not being able to free, not being able to shake somone off the back", could lead to this localization.

The redness and pimples appear during the conflict-resolved phase of the epidermis and last as long as the conflict was active. So, in this case, a few hours. And indeed, during the evening/night the symptoms disappeared completely and permanently.

This was the most intense and obvious conflict activity that we could observe in our son so far on the basis of compulsive thinking. We were glad to be able to proceed in such a targeted way by this, to lead the SBS so quickly - and therefore so unproblematically - through the conflict-relieved phase.