Best for: OCD and Phobias (I specialize in both) but works well with anxiety issues

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is the gold standard for treatment of OCD and phobias (including social phobia previously termed “social anxiety disorder”).  There are numerous clinical trials that show how effective ERP can be to treat these issues (you can look online to verify this claim).  I’ve had multiple trainings in using ERP to treat OCD and other anxiety disorders and offer this to my clients.  

In doing ERP from an ACT approach, you will learn that you can do what is important regardless of what the obsessive thoughts are telling you.

The anxiety does not need to disappear for you to move forward.  By staying in contact with the anxiety (through exposure) and not engaging in safety behaviors (compulsions), your confidence in your ability to handle the anxiety and discomfort is going to gradually grow (due to inhibitory learning).

Inhibitory learning involves creating new neural associations that compete with and eventually replace previous fear based learning.  It does this through: 

• Expectancy violation (i.e. the real results of the exposure do not align with what the OCD was telling you in going to happen)
• Distress tolerance: Rather than focusing on working towards desensitization (the focus, traditionally, in ERP which means a significant decrease or even elimination of anxiety).  In ERP through the lens of ACT, you are going to learn how to be good at tolerating anxiety so that you can still do those things that are important to you even though you’re anxious.  Research is actually now showing that this is equally and maybe even more important than desensitization.

To conquer OCD requires hard work, commitment, and stepping out of your comfort zone but we will work on this together and move at your pace. If you’re feeling afraid, this is ok and a common experience for the people who need ERP the most.