Exposure And Response Prevention (ERP)
Are You Ready to Take the First Steps to Overcoming Your OCD Once and for All?
Have you been told that you have OCD or suspect you might have symptoms that align with OCD?
Are you exhausted by the immense time and energy your intrusive thoughts and corresponding compulsions steal from you every day?
Have you been desperately searching for a long-term solution to finally free yourself from disruptive intrusive thoughts and the lingering discomfort they cause?
Do you find that your OCD symptoms have been eating up more of the time you’d love to devote to your relationships, hobbies, or school/work?
Living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can feel like you are trapped in your own personal nightmare. You have probably found ways to temporarily find relief, only to experience more exhaustion and defeat when your intrusive thoughts and physical discomfort return, sometimes with a vengeance.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) Provides Long Term Relief
If you constantly feel exhausted and overwhelmed by your OCD, you are not alone. OCD hijacks your mind’s ability to think clearly, so that when your anxiety is triggered all you want to do is feel better. You likely find yourself feeling stuck engaging in repetitious behaviors that you understand are unhelpful but can’t seem to stop. These may include mentally reviewing or over-analyzing thoughts, suppressing or pushing away unpleasant feelings, decontaminating yourself or your environment, checking, ordering, obsessively paying attention, avoiding scary situations, and many more.
OCD is a neurobiological disorder which, in part, negatively affects your ability to tolerate uncertainty. OCD is a tricky beast, and it excels at coming up with sticky “what if” thoughts that likely lead you to spend far too many hours of your day trying to gain comfort or reassurance. Unfortunately, the comfort you feel from engaging in OCD compulsions is always short lived, and the more you try to solve the OCD “what if” thoughts, the stickier they tend to become. Fortunately, there is an incredibly powerful tool to help you break free from these stuck cycles and reclaim your life for good. Exposure and response prevention (ERP) has decades of research support it’s effectiveness and is widely known to be the gold standard and first line treatment for OCD.
You Deserve Peace of Mind
Obsessive Compulsions Disorder (OCD) affects roughly 2.5 million US adults and 500 thousand US children and teens. Having OCD doesn’t mean that your brain is broken or you are going crazy. OCD means that your mind’s alarm system, the “flight vs fight” center, is overprotective. With OCD, your mind is sending a “danger signal” in response to a specific set of thoughts (also known as OCD themes), when really there is no active danger in the world around you.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) was designed to actively teach our brain’s alarm system that while specific thoughts or situations seem very scary, we are physically and emotionally safe. Over time, your mind will begin to learn safety and, like hundreds of Beachfront clients, you will experience relief you may not have felt in years. While exposure and response prevention (ERP) is the standard of care for OCD, far too many people do not receive it due to lack of proficient providers, stigma and misinformation about OCD, and poor understanding about what ERP entails. Many of our clients have had years of various forms of traditional “talk therapy” before they finally discovered ERP. They are astounded at the progress they can make within the first couple of months of treatment.
Your OCD Is Treatable
Prior to the 1960’s, OCD was largely considered a disorder with a very poor prognosis. People with OCD were expected to manage their symptoms and tolerate the incredible suffering that comes with this illness. In the 60’ and 70’s, research that was spearheaded by behavioral scientists began proliferating showing that reducing compulsions and systematically facing one's fears can actually lead to long-term remission of the disorder. The field of psychology has come an incredibly long way since then, incorporating other evidence-based skills into traditional ERP such as cognitive therapy (e.g. discovering distortions in OCD thinking), mindfulness (e.g. learning how to stay present), self-compassion (e.g. fostering an attitude of kindness toward our suffering), and meta-cognitive tools (skills to change the way we think about thinking). Regardless of the severity of your OCD, ERP has decades of research showing that it can radically change your relationship with your intrusive thoughts and feelings.
Exposure and Response Prevention for You
You no longer have to face your unwanted, intrusive thoughts all by yourself. At Beachfront Anxiety Specialists, we have devoted our professional careers to helping our clients overcome OCD and to reclaim their lives. We are true specialists who use cutting-edge psychologically validated interventions to help our clients attain the long-lasting relief they are seeking.
We combine our extensive experience treating OCD with a warm, compassionate, and collaborative approach. Whether this is the first time you have sought help for OCD or you have been to therapy in the past, OCD focused treatment can help you get your life back on track by reducing symptoms and empowering you to make the changes you’ve been looking for.
What to Expect in Sessions with Us
The first 2 to 3 sessions will be spent developing a trusting relationship with your therapist and undergoing a comprehensive assessment. You and your therapist will work together to gain clarity on how your OCD is presenting in your life, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Your therapist will be providing you with education about the nature of OCD and anxiety and you will have plenty of opportunities to ask questions and give feedback to your therapist.
Once you have a solid grasp of how your OCD works, you and your therapist will discuss ways to tailor exposure and response prevention (ERP) to your specific needs, values, culture, and background. Common interventions in an ERP protocol include the following elements:
Developing an ERP road map (also called a “fear hierarchy”) that outlines your OCD triggers and compulsion.
Brainstorming ways to begin facing your fears without engaging in compulsions or other safety behaviors. We are very strategic in this approach, in that we will guide you to gently push yourself without feeling overwhelmed. You are always in control of what you decide to do and the pacing of ERP. Some clients like to get to work quickly on their fears, and others need to take it step by step. Having an expert in OCD guide you through this process to support you and answer any questions is often an essential part of recovery from OCD.
Learning a variety of tools to respond to intrusive thoughts in a manner that will take away their power and allow them to gradually fall into the background.
Learning how to change your adversarial relationship with uncomfortable sensations to one of acceptance, openness, and curiosity.
Developing a relapse prevention plan to ensure you can maintain the treatment gains you made in ERP therapy.
After the first several ERP sessions, you and your therapist will discuss, apply, and practice these ERP tools together in session. Since you spend a very small percentage of your week in therapy, much of the change in ERP will come from between session practice exercises that you and your therapist will develop together in session. There’s no “one size fits all approach” to treating OCD, but we do know that the more you invest in ERP practice between sessions, the more change you will see.
Customizing Therapy Techniques for Your Needs
While ERP is an essential ingredient in living a life free from OCD, our therapists are also highly trained in several other evidence-based modalities to help you meet your treatment goals. We are able to weave in mindfulness, self-compassion, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Cognitive Therapy for OCD. These approaches are powerful supplements to ERP by helping you connect with closely held values, changing your relationship with your negative thoughts and painful feelings, and learning how to ground yourself in the present moment when you are spiraling into the past or the future. Applying these other tools can make the process of facing your fears much less daunting.
You May Still Have Questions About OCD Therapy…
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Therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an investment in your long-term sense of self and peace of mind. The goal of OCD therapy is to help you develop mastery over your OCD, empowering you to become your own OCD therapist. Unlike traditional forms of talk therapy, OCD treatment is active, collaborative, and goal-driven. Typical courses of treatment usually last between 12-25 sessions, although this can vary from client to client.
Our fees reflect the depth of our training and clinical expertise and allow our therapists to maintain smaller case loads so we can devote more attention to each of our clients. While we are not in-network with any insurance company, we do offer superbills which you can submit to your insurance company for out-of-network benefits.
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We work closely with our clients to help them gently face their fears one step at a time. An exposure exercise should never feel overwhelming or too scary, and you are always in charge of the process. We work to strategically face down OCD in bite sized pieces, where you will feel empowered by developing wins under your belt as you chip away at the hold your OCD has over you. We also teach powerful skills that will help you navigate internal discomfort with ease. These are tools that you will be able to take with you and use for the rest of your life.
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Traditional talk therapy is typically non-directive and non-structured. People bring up problems and struggles into therapy, where they feel heard and validated. While this tends to help people feel better in the short term, traditional talk therapy can actually make OCD worse by inadvertently feeding into rumination and OCD compulsions. At Beachfront Anxiety Specialists, not only will you feel truly heard and understood, but you will learn and practice actionable skills that you can begin applying immediately.
You Can Attain Relief from Intrusive Thoughts
If you would like to schedule an appointment or discuss any questions you may have regarding OCD therapy, contact us below. We try to get back to all voicemails and emails within 24 hours. Before starting therapy, we always offer free 20 minute phone consultations to make sure we’re a good fit to work together.