Exposure and Response Prevention

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the treatment of choice for breaking through extreme anxieties and phobias. ERP involves learning to tolerate unpleasant thoughts and feelings as you are gradually exposed to increased amounts of feared and avoided experience. Fears and phobias slowly fade as confidence and calm replace long-battled anxiety and terror.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapists use ERP as an effective tool to help decrease unwanted anxious behaviors, including symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Clients gradually learn to face fears and discontinue the habits they have developed to escape those fears.  This treatment tends to involve a short-term increase in anxiety as fears are being faced, but can result in tremendous long-term relief from seemingly inescapable anxious symptoms.  (To see Exposure and Response Prevention in action, take a look at Obsessed, A&E’s show about OCD treatment.)

To discuss whether ERP treatment is appropriate for you and to arrange a first appointment, call (323) 739-4322.