Exposure-Based Therapy for OCD and Anxiety Disorders
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a highly effective cognitive-behavioral therapy approach used to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related anxiety disorders. The primary goal of ERP is to help you develop courage to gradually face your fears, to strengthen your sense of agency, to stop engaging in mental and physical compulsions, and to broaden your ability to tolerate uncertainty. Over time anxiety will lose its grip and you will be supported in changing your patterns of behavior.
ERP has two key components: exposure and response prevention.
Exposure: This aspect of ERP encourages individuals to purposefully face the situations, thoughts, or objects that trigger anxiety. The exposures are carefully planned and start with less challenging scenarios, gradually progressing to more difficult situations with trained professional support. The gradual exposures are collaboratively planned and consent-based. Clients are never “forced” to engage in an exposure that they haven’t consented to or is against their personal values.
Response Prevention: During exposure, you are asked to refrain from engaging in compulsive behaviors, including avoidance, and rituals you would typically use in an attempt to neutralize your anxiety. By resisting these responses or rituals, you learn new skills and behavior patters, which ultimately breaks the cycle of OCD.
Throughout ERP treatment, you will receive support and guidance to navigate recovery. The goal is not to eliminate anxiety entirely—because some anxiety is part of the human experience and has an adaptive function—but to help you recognize you can stop running away from fear and stop engaging in compulsive behavior.
By treating OCD through structured exposure and refraining from avoidance and rituals, you can take your life back from debilitating anxiety and regain a sense of agency, which contributes to psychosocial well-being and other positive life outcomes.
In therapy sessions, either in person in Ventura, CA, or via Telehealth across California, we will tailor your ERP treatment to meet your individual needs and support your particular OCD presentation. You will learn healthy strategies to manage anxiety, receive encouragement to keep going, and gain tools to act with courage during exposures. The therapy environment is appropriately supportive and challenging to facilitate your growth and healing.
ERP is a compassionate journey towards empowerment and resilience.
ERP for OCD, Anxiety, and Phobias
Learn to mange anxiety in healthy ways
With ERP for anxiety and OCD you will learn healthy ways to reduce your anxiety instead of engaging in old patterns of compulsive rituals and avoidance. You will get to practice new skills to cope with those times when you are feeling nervous or worried and have the urge to neutralize the discomfort with behavior you find concerning, including passive avoidance. While learning to manage your triggers you will be supported by a therapist who understands the difficulty and who is rooting for your courage to keep moving towards your goals.
Develop belief in your ability to face your fears
With continued practice in not running away from things that trigger obsessive anxiety you will begin to develop a new narrative about your capabilities. You will learn that you can “feel the fear and do it anyway,” and you may experience the fear dissipating in situations where you aren’t actually in danger. The more you practice showing up with courage while in ERP treatment for anxiety or OCD, the sooner you will develop a more confident sense of self. ERP can help you rewrite your story, in which you are brave and capable.
Increase sense of agency
ERP treatment facilitates knowledge that we have choice. Right now it feels as if you are compelled to practice anxious avoidance and neutralizing rituals—like you have no choice—but with the help of a carefully crafted ERP treatment plan, you reclaim your freedom to choose. The ability to choose how we spend our time, to decide what behavior we want to engage in, is the antithesis to that feeling of being trapped or enslaved to compulsive behavior that is out of alignment with our values.
Tolerate life’s uncertainty with courage & compassion
It’s hard not knowing for certain how things will turn out. We can invest our best efforts in trying to be healthy, trying to keep our kids safe, trying to control the outcome of things deeply important to us, but the reality is we don’t have full control and we can’t know for sure what the future holds. Tolerance for uncertainty is hard for people with vulnerabilities to anxiety disorders and OCD. Avoidance and compulsive behavior are attempts to secure certainty, which is not possible and comes at a great cost to the richness of life’s adventures. Your ERP therapy should include the goal of learning to accept uncertainty to increase your odds of successful treatment.
Be supported in recovery with specialized help
Effective treatment for anxiety disorders and OCD can be counterintuitive. While therapists have good intentions, certain common therapy practices can make anxiety and OCD worse. Some of these practices include a significant amount of reassurance, justification to avoid triggers, hyper-focus on content of thoughts, open-ended talk therapy with no required commitment to action, and not confronting self-defeating behavior in favor of excessive validation. ERP treatment is the right balance of insight, support, authentic care from the therapist, and challenge to grow. I (Teva) receive live bi-weekly consultation from ERP experts in the field of anxiety, phobias, and OCD. Specialized treatment facilitates recovery while the wrong treatment maintains symptoms and wastes precious time and resources.