OCD Wellness Services

What is ERP?

ERP therapy is a modality under Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and is the gold-standard, evidence-based treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). ERP is a behavioural therapy that gradually exposes the individual to situations that provoke obsession (fear). During the exposure, the individual will participate in ritual prevention. ERP is utilized to relieve the individual from the OCD cycle, regaining their life. 

Standard Terms In ERP

Exposures– are planned activities that expose the individual to the situations that provoke the obsession. Exposures can be completed in real life (in-vivo exposure) or through imagination (imaginal exposure).

Ritual Prevention- is the act of removing the compulsion/ritual or avoidance behaviours when the obsession is triggered.

Processing – the clinician utilizes Socratic questioning before, during, or after the exposure to support the individual in processing new learning that does not occur during the OCD cycle. 

Key Learning in ERP

Habituation–   is the natural decline in distress response with repeated exposure to a triggering situation. This occurs by unpairing the feared response to the situation, eliminating the fear and replacing it with new safety learning.

Inhibitory Learning–  recognizes ERP does not cause the fear to be eliminated, and for that reason, habituation does not always occur. Inhibitory learning acknowledges that new safety learning around the feared situation becomes more prominent than the existing fear through repeated exposures. During this process, the individual builds tolerance around the feared response and situation. The individual also builds tolerance around uncertainty.