ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) is the gold standard treatment for both OCD and Anxiety. ERP is a method often used in CBT and, as denoted in the name, consists of two components: Exposure and Response Prevention. The exposure component refers to practicing confronting the thoughts, images, objects, and situations that make you anxious and/or provoke your obsessions, and the response prevention part of ERP refers to making a choice not to do a compulsive behavior once the anxiety or obsessions have been “triggered”. The intention for this is that overtime, this will help rewire your brain to no longer see the initial trigger or object of your obsession as a threat. The prospect of purposefully confronting the things that make you anxious may sound a bit overwhelming, but with ERP, you have trained therapist working collaboratively with you to develop a plan for exposure and then coaching you through confronting the situation, leaning into the feelings it provokes, sticking with it, and resisting the urge to engage in compulsive behavior. It’s challenging, yet liberating, because you afford yourself the opportunity to learn something new about yourself (that you can handle the anxiety!) and about the thing that triggers your anxiety (that the monster doesn’t have any teeth!).

What is the goal of ERP?

The primary aim of ERP is to promote safety learning, which often takes two forms: firstly, that the initial object of your fears and concerns isn’t as dangerous, meaningful, or scary as you once thought - that party, person, task, or thought isn’t as frightening as you think it is - and secondly, that anxiety itself is safe - that you can handle anxiety in all its forms, and still live a meaningful, productive, connected, and value-directed life. Ultimately, the goal of ERP is to equip and empower those who struggle with anxiety and OCD with a framework and set of tools to work with anxiety in a self-led fashion, without the guidance of a trained therapist, to embody an approach-oriented, values-directed lifestyle.

For more information, resources, or books on all things Anxiety and OCD, please visit The International OCD Foundation website: https://iocdf.org/.