Exposure & Response Prevention (ERP) Therapy in Denver

OCD is a bully, and bullies get stronger when you give them what they want. Exposure & response prevention (ERP) is the gold-standard treatment for OCD. It works by doing the counterintuitive thing: facing your fears without performing the compulsions that provide temporary relief.

This sounds terrifying, and it can be uncomfortable, but it's also the path to freedom.

OCD convinces you that the anxiety is unbearable, that something terrible will happen if you don't do the compulsion, that you're responsible for preventing catastrophe. ERP teaches you through experience that none of that is true—that you can tolerate the discomfort, that the feared outcome doesn't happen, and that the compulsions are actually maintaining your prison.

What is ERP?

Exposure and response prevention is the first-line behavioral treatment for OCD, trichotillomania, and related conditions. The therapy has two components:

1. Exposure: Gradually and systematically confronting the situations, thoughts, or images that trigger obsessive anxiety

2. Response prevention: Resisting the compulsive behaviors or mental rituals you typically use to reduce that anxiety.

Compulsions provide short-term relief but maintain the OCD cycle long-term by preventing you from learning that the anxiety will decrease on its own and that your feared outcomes are extremely unlikely or not as catastrophic as OCD claims.

ERP involves creating a hierarchy of feared situations ranked by difficulty, then systematically working through them from easier to harder, staying in the exposure long enough for your anxiety to naturally decrease without performing compulsions.

ERP requires courage and commitment, but for OCD, it's the most effective path to getting your life back from the disorder's control.