Compassionate Exposure & Response Prevention treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Treatment for OCD doesn’t have to be grueling or distressing - in fact, it can be empowering when you begin to develop the skills and confidence to manage OCD.
How to know if you’d benefit from obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment
I can help you differentiate general anxiety from obsessive-compulsive disorder and obsessive thoughts. If you experience any of the following, you might benefit from OCD counseling and ERP treatment:
The anxious thoughts focus on doubt, uncertainty, contamination, perfectionism, harm to yourself or others, or disturbing thoughts
The anxious thoughts get you to engage in compulsive, repetitive behaviors that are meant to neutralize and relieve the distress that you feel.
These compulsive behaviors give you short-term relief from the anxiety, but the anxiety continues to return again and again
Your obsessive behaviors revolve around checking, washing, counting, mental rituals, avoidance behaviors, reassurance seeking, or similar
These obsessions and rituals take up more than you’d like during your day (e.g. it takes 25 minutes to get out the door in the morning instead of 5)
These obsessions and rituals impact your relationships, friendships, family, self-care, daily living, work, etc.
These intrusive thoughts and compulsions are distressing to you, and raise your overall anxiety on a near-daily basis
Therapy format
When working with OCD, we typically meet at least one time per week, with the option to meet more frequently if necessary.
(Please note that insurance typically does not cover more than one session per week.)
The most effective OCD treatment is frequent and repetitive, so we need to establish momentum right away. Treatment also includes out-of-session work such as behavior and anxiety tracking, or exposure and responsive prevention to practice on your own once we’ve practiced together.
I also offer OCD intensives (private pay) in which we spend 3-5 hours together, multiple days or weeks in a row, to address OCD thoroughly and establish a strong treatment cadence.
How is OCD typically treated?
The gold standard treatment for OCD is Exposure and Response Prevention (or ERP). You may have heard of this before, as it’s not uncommon. ERP is a treatment method that helps clients develop coping skills and distress tolerance, and then gradually introduces them to confronting their triggers (the exposure) without engaging in the compulsions or safety behaviors (response prevention). It’s important that OCD is done correctly, or you may end up reinforcing your compulsions, creating new compulsions, and staying stuck in your rituals.
I also include EMDR in our OCD treatment. While EMDR is best known as a trauma treatment, it is widely utilized for other challenging problems. EMDR can help us learn relaxation and grounding skills, gain emotional distance from the OCD and thus gain insight into it, and reprocess negative or traumatic experiences that have contributed to the strength and influence of OCD in our lives.
When we engage in ERP and EMDR, we are creating a corrective learning experience in which you (and the anxiety) learn that the worry and compulsions are unnecessary. Your family will not get hurt if you do not brush your teeth for 10 minutes 5 times a day. Logically, you know this - but OCD is persuasive! We’ll repeat these learning experiences so that you can become more and more confident in what you already know - that OCD is lying to you!
Goals and outcomes
For those living with OCD, there are many treatment benefits. First and foremost, you will get your time and energy back from OCD and be able to focus on other parts of your life and your self. You can also expect these potential outcomes:
Increase calming and relaxation skills to decrease tension during moments of anxiety.
Learn about and understand the behavioral principles behind anxiety and OCD, and how anxiety and OCD have taught you to engage in compulsions
Create an exposure hierarchy (ranking anxieties by level of distress) to use in gradual exposure to triggers
Together, engage in exposure & response prevention exercises, repetitively and frequently, to teach our brains that we don’t need to worry
Independently implement exposure & response prevention exercises outside of session to maintain and continue progress
Decrease the number of obsessions and compulsions that occur throughout the day
Decrease the distress level related to obsessions and not following through on compulsions
Next steps to start counseling
To get started, schedule a free consultation so that we can talk about what you’d like to work on and what you’re looking for.
I can share more background on my approach and therapy style, and we can chat about logistics and scheduling.