Your guide to ERP therapy for OCD

The subtleties that can supercharge your recovery

Exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP) for OCD is all about facing your fears. While that may seem straightforward—face your triggers while not doing either physical or mental compulsions—the process of overcoming OCD is sometimes not as black and white as that sounds. In fact, understanding and addressing the shades of grey in both how the disorder manifests and how we approach and implement ERP can truly help us supercharge our efforts and our recoveries.

I’ve selected the posts for this guide from the more than 100 I’ve written in the past decade because they highlight the most important of these nuances, these spaces between the black and the white that can give you the biggest OCD recovery rewards. I’ve organized the posts into chapters, just like a book (and this one’s free!), to make the topics easier to find.

I hope you’ll bookmark this page and visit it frequently throughout your recovery journey. I also encourage you to turn your own adversity into advocacy and leave a comment for others below about which posts are most helpful for you.

And most importantly, even if your recovery journey hasn’t been straightforward (mine sure wasn’t!), always remember what Dr. Reid Wilson wrote in the Afterword to my memoir, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life:

“Can you tame OCD? Bet your life on it. That’s why Shala wrote this book.”
And these blog posts!

Chapter 1: New perspectives on OCD

• What OCD is really about: The Mirage of the 4 Cs of OCD
• But isn’t OCD helping me? Don’t Give OCD Credit for Your Strengths
• The power of personifying OCD : Aha! Moments from an Aha! Moment … and dog toys … and questionable holiday merchandising choices …
• You don’t have to battle OCD alone: How to Find an OCD Therapist

Chapter 2: An overview of ERP

• What’s involved in doing ERP? What is ERP?
• Understanding the goal of ERP: OCD’s not always wrong—but that doesn’t mean it’s right
• And by the way, the goal is NOT to do ERP perfectly: I’m an OCD Therapist With OCD. And I Don’t Do ERP Perfectly
• Why exposure therapy for OCD could also be called “vulnerability therapy.” The Best TED Talks for People with OCD: Part 4
• The key to successful ERP is homework between therapy sessions: Why Doing ERP Homework Matters to Your OCD Recovery

Chapter 3: Why attitude matters

• How we think about OCD triggers makes all the difference: #FaceYourFear: Transform your triggers to win
• “Have to” is OCD’s language; change how you talk to yourself: Turn “I have to” into “I want to”
• The power of befriending your anxiety: The Best TED Talks for People with OCD: Part 3
• The inspiration for Shoulders Back! and why a powerful stance matters: The Best TED Talks for People with OCD: Part 2.
• People who tame OCD most effectively are those who make three strategic shifts in their attitude: 3 Ways to Power Up Your OCD Therapy
• A fun way to cop an attitude your OCD won’t like: The Hidden Power of Swearing at Your OCD
• Watch me tell one of my favorite stories from Fred about one of the first times I put an OCD-taming attitude into practice: An OCD-Taming Attitude: Making OCD Pass Out

Chapter 4: Managing mental compulsions / rumination

• Having trouble getting out of your head? Try a competing response to mental rituals: Interrupt OCD’s Mental Rituals with “May or May Not” and Q&A for Interrupting OCD’s Mental Rituals with “May or May Not”
• The nuts and bolts of how I use ERP scripting to address mental compulsions: Using ERP Scripting for OCD (aka Imaginal Exposure)
• Don’t have time to do ERP scripting? You do if you turn your shower into therapy time! Shower Scripting
• Think you don’t do mental compulsions? Well, how ’bout this one?  The “trying on compulsions” compulsion
• The most powerful response to OCD is no response at all: Shoulders Back! The Man in the Park and Q&A for Shoulders Back! The Man in the Park
• An overview you can listen to of how to address mental rituals: Managing Mental Compulsions on Your Anxiety Toolkit

Chapter 5: Motivation

• How OCD gets you to avoid doing ERP and how we turn that around to motivate ourselves: Motivating yourself to do ERP therapy for OCD
• Why mindfulness training helps with OCD recovery, and how to use what you want to get your ERP done: A Simple Motivation Trick: This Before That

Chapter 6: Avoiding pitfalls that can sabotage your recovery

• When emotions turn into compulsions: The Subtle OCD Compulsion You Might Not Know You’re Doing
• When you’re in a shame-based self-punishment cycle because OCD tells you you’re bad: Self-punishment as an OCD ritual
• When OCD itself feels like its traumatizing you: OCD as a Trauma—and How To Fight Back
• When you’re doing things for others for fear-based reasons: The truth about people pleasing
• When OCD and PTSD intertwine: Post-traumatic OCD
• When OCD is mixed with workaholism (or a state of constantly doing something “productive”, even if it isn’t work), just right OCD, and a feeling of never being quite good enough: Optimization OCD: Your productivity does not equal your worth
• When you have health issues and OCD tells you it has an MD: Managing Health Anxiety/OCD

Chapter 7: Self-compassion

• Why self-compassion matters to your OCD recovery from self-compassion expert Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT:  Excerpt from The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD
• How and why to talk to yourself compassionately: Aha! Moments from Self-Compassion
• How you can go about treating yourself more kindly: Show yourself some love!

Chapter 8: Living an ERP lifestyle and maintaining your recovery

• Keeping your OCD recovery strong: the ERP lifestyle
• How to push yourself out of your comfort zone and pursue the life you want to live: The Best TED Talks for People with OCD: Park 5. 
• Need a quick reminder of all things ERP? The Anatomy of ERP for OCD
• We all slip sometimes: A Day of ERP (plus self-indulgence vs. self-compassion)
• How to avoid having “dead people’s goals” and discover that “discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life”: The Best TED Talk for People with OCD: Part 1. 
• The essence of good exposure and response prevention therapy: Act as though OCD is irrelevant
• Dr. Reid Wilson and I discuss steps to maintaining OCD recovery goals in this video: How to Maintain OCD Recovery Gains

Chapter 9: The impact of technology on your OCD recovery

• How technology can inadvertently have you doing compulsions: Are You Handcuffed to Your Devices, and Is OCD at Fault?
• Is your phone sabotaging your OCD recovery? Marrying Intention and Attention
• Are news and social media getting you down? 3 questions about impact of media on mental health
• Maybe some positive news could help turn things around: Positive News: the opposite of OCD
• Is wearable technology right for you and your OCD recovery? OCD, self-criticism, and wearable technology

Learn more about taming OCD

To learn more about how I use all the ERP tools above in daily life, see Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life.  Click here to purchase your copy.

Sign up for my Shoulders Back! newsletter to receive OCD-taming tips & resources, including notifications of new FredTalks, delivered every month to your inbox.

My blogs are not a replacement for therapy, and I encourage all readers who have obsessive compulsive disorder to find a competent ERP therapist. See the IOCDF treatment provider database for a provider near you. And never give up hope, because you can tame OCD and reclaim your life!