What Is Exposure And Response Prevention (ERP) Therapy?

For many children, adolescents, and adults, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a debilitating mental health issue. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the “lifetime prevalence of OCD among U.S. adults is 2.3 percent. And among adults with OCD, approximately one half—50.6 percent—will have a serious impairment.” [1]

OCD is punctuated by high anxiety, intrusive and looping thoughts, rumination, and repetitive checking or rituals. Being trapped by OCD can make your world increasingly smaller. As your brain’s preoccupation with intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors overshadows everything else, you gradually forfeit your well-being.

Unfortunately, OCD does not respond well to regular talk therapy or even standard Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). However, Exposure and Response Prevention, a subsection of CBT, can successfully treat OCD. ERP therapy is often considered the gold standard treatment for OCD, “which has the strongest evidence supporting its use in the treatment of OCD.” [2]

How Is Exposure And Response Prevention Incorporated Into Therapy Sessions?

As the name implies, ERP therapy focuses on exposure and response prevention to alleviate OCD symptoms. Exposure entails confronting the thoughts, images, places, reminders, and situations that cause your anxiety. Response prevention aims to reduce the avoidance, rumination, repetitive habits, and compulsions that you engage in as a response to

intrusive and obsessive thoughts. By working on skills in session and at home, you will feel increasingly in control of your own recovery.

Avoiding anxiety-inducing situations and performing repetitive compulsions can feel like solutions because they will temporarily relieve mounting stress. However, at best, they only provide short-term relief and, at worst, keep OCD entrenched where it will eventually gain strength over time.

Exposure and Response Prevention takes the opposite approach. Although you may experience some short-term “pain” because it feels scary or risky to withhold compulsions and confront obsessions, doing so will be in the service of the longer-term gain of regaining control over OCD.

Although the idea of deliberately exposing yourself to anxiety-inducing thoughts can seem daunting to anyone who may be seeking OCD treatment for the first time, our ERP-trained therapists will support and coach you to go at your own pace, step-by-step. We will start with small exposures to stretch your comfort zone and gradually work towards confronting more challenging thoughts and fears.

Exposure and Response Prevention can take place either in-person or online. We have found that ERP therapy conducted within the home environment, where clients are typically most triggered, can sometimes be especially effective.

Who Can Benefit From Exposure And Response Prevention?

CBT SoCal offers ERP therapy to adults, children, and teens who suffer from OCD, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and compulsive habits they are struggling to break. These unwanted thoughts and habits may be related to contamination, safety, violence towards self or others, sexual orientation, relationships, or a range of other issues.

Although general talk therapy can help with other mental health concerns, in some cases it can exacerbate OCD symptoms by creating new intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Like other forms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), ERP counseling takes a proactive, tangible approach to address OCD and help you move toward recovery.

OCD is difficult to remedy because you often feel like you are drawn into anxious doubts and imagined catastrophes, while simultaneously struggling to stay grounded in your own logic, senses, and reality. That is why our approach to Exposure and Response Prevention therapy will be gradual. We will start at the shallow end of the pool, slowly working up to the deeper depths once you have gained a sense of confidence tackling the smaller stuff.

Providing ERP therapy to our clients with OCD provides them with a sense of empowerment and comfort that they have a direction forward that is grounded in research and experience. ERP therapy has been shown to create favorable benefits in 63 percent of OCD sufferers in about 14 sessions [3]. Positive outcomes can include:

• Reduced frequency and severity of obsessive thoughts;
• Less anxiety-induced distress;
• Fewer hours consumed by ruminating and engaging in compulsive behavior;
• Improved connection to reality and one’s own values;
• A heightened sense of calm and well-being.

Why We Incorporate Exposure And Response Prevention Into OCD Treatment

CBT SoCal‘s tradition of excellence originated with our founder, Dr. Rodney Boone, a renowned OCD specialist practicing in the Los Angeles area since the 1980s. Our staff has been trained in Exposure and Response Prevention through the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF), Rogers Behavioral Health, and other specialty practices nationwide. We specifically tailor ERP therapy to address how OCD shows up for you, integrating treatment as needed with other approaches under the CBT umbrella, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT).

Given our expertise with OCD and anxiety, Exposure and Response Prevention has been a core component of our services for decades. By utilizing ERP-based roadmaps and tools, you actively engage in your own recovery, enabling you to rediscover hope and empowerment. ERP therapy allows you to reconnect with a world grounded in logic and reality, rather than one rooted in imagined doubt, uncertainty, and fear.

With ERP therapy, you can gradually build up confidence that it’s possible to live each day feeling less anxious and avoid getting stuck in relentless thoughts and rituals. Freeing yourself from OCD will give you renewed energy, motivation, and time to focus on what’s most important to you. We are committed to providing you with a path that will help you achieve your desired goals.

Learn How Exposure And Response Prevention Can Help You

With ERP therapy, you can silence the bully in your brain. To find out more about Exposure Response Prevention with CBT SoCal, either in-person or online, please call or text 818-547-2623 or visit our contact page [1] .

[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd#part_2581

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343408/

[3] http://jabramowitz.com/PDFs/1996metaanalysis.pdf