Exposure Response Therapy for Anxiety and OCD

Exposure Therapy for Anxiety and OCD?

Having anxiety and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can have quite the impact in one’s life – especially if these are not properly mitigated and managed throughout the course of one’s lifetime. Despite the normalcy of anxiety and the occurrence of OCD among various individuals, their impact can’t be underestimated. Unfortunately, sometimes their effects on individuals can be so severe that they impede with the way they function in everyday life, which can harm not just themselves, but their relationships with friends, loved ones, and colleagues. However, just because anxiety and OCD can have this much an impact doesn’t mean it’s too late. In fact, exposure therapy for anxiety and OCD may be of assistance. 

Exposure therapy is very important for the recover from OCD and strong anxieties or phobias. Other anxiety treatments such as mindfulness, thought restructuring, worry diaries, physiological soothing can assist and be of some relief from the intense anxiety that one fees but it rarely results in the resolution of OCD. 

By The Numbers: Anxiety, OCD

Before one can explore the possibility of exposure therapy as an aid to deal and manage anxiety and OCD, perhaps it’s helpful to at least understand what these two conditions are.

Anxiety, in its essence, is a state of being characterised by feelings of worry and helplessness that is often accompanied by stress. Anxiety is a normal emotion, and can be experienced in times of duress – such as situations that may pose a threat to one’s life, like looking out for predators. This ancient “instinct” has been carried over to modern times, translating the instinct to survive as anxiety towards things such as reports, presentations, or the feeling of nervousness on the first day of school. While anxiety should normally subside in a few hours or days, some people have anxiety disorders that take upwards of weeks and months, even years, to dissipate. In fact, 260-million people worldwide have some kind of anxiety disorder.

Phobia, is an excessive and irrational fear reaction. It is a deep sense of panic when you encounter the source of your fear such as a place, thought, situation or object. Phobias are usually connected with something specific. Many people with phobias realise that the fear is irrational but they cannot change how they feel about it. At its worst, phobias can interfere with work, school and personal relationships. 

OCD, in the meantime, is a kind of anxiety disorder characterised by unwanted but recurring impulses, images, or thoughts that are often accompanied by repetitive rituals and obsessions. A lot of people with OCD are aware that the symptoms they show are excessive and irrational, but still find these hard to control and resist. In fact, the World Health Organization includes OCD among the ten most disabling diseases when it comes to loss of one’s quality of life, and is the fourth most prevalent mental disorder. Moreover, around 2-percent of Australians, or 500,000, have OCD.  

If one were to assess the three aforementioned conditions, perhaps you might notice that much of the reasons why people tend to have these woes are because of uncertainties and fears. In the cases of both anxiety and OCD, the “best” way to get rid of these “states of being” are to remove the cause of fear and uncertainty in the first place. 

Unfortunately, the problem with this approach is that trying to find ways to “remove” the cause of concern can pave way to unhealthy and irrational behavior. In the case of OCD, it can inspire the occurrence of ritualistic behaviors. If you have OCD because of fear of disease, for instance, the logic might go: because eradicating all disease in the world is impossible, you can simply just wash your hands again. If this doesn’t make you immune to diseases, then you can wash it over, and over, and over. 

Exposure Therapy: What Is It, And Can It Help?

If you’ve understood the problem of “removing” one’s fears above, then perhaps it’s time to introduce exposure therapy. Psychology Today describes this as something that can consistently help OCD sufferers alleviate their symptoms.

Unlike protecting the sufferer from their fears, exposure therapy involves the sufferer confronting their fears directly with guidance from a trained therapist.

Exposure therapy, formally known as Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), is normally done with the help of a trained therapist. Exposure therapy is a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The process normally involves a sufferer of anxiety disorders approaching the source of their fears  while they resist the urge to perform their compulsive and ritualistic behaviours. Your therapist will show you how the rituals you perform are actually keeping you trapped in the anxiety and will give you new skills to deal with the anxiety you feel in a more constructive way. 

Often with OCD confronting your obsessions makes your anxiety increase. The idea of not being able to perform your compulsion makes your anxiety sky rocket. When you participate in exposure response therapy we help you make the commitment to not give into the compulsive behaviour and make the choice to use more effective strategies to manage the anxiety. When you use the right strategy to reduce anxiety instead of a compulsion (such as washing, counting, mentally checking) over time your anxiety will reduce, when you start to deal with all of your obsessions your anxiety overall will start to reduce. 

You will learn to do this daily in a variety of ways that can include reading articles or books, watching videos, listening to home-made therapy recordings, writing feared words or sentences, actively agreeing with the thought of the moment, etc.

Examples may include:

• Reading articles or books, watching videos
• Making a series of gradually more challenging 2-minute recordings on your phone that tell you the fearful thought is true, and listening to them several times daily
• Recording and listening to home-made therapy recordings
• Writing feared words or sentences
• Actively agreeing with your thought content and imagining consequences
• If you have obsessions related to infection and contamination, you may be asked to gradually expose yourself to contaminated items  without being allowed to do ritualistic behaviors.
• If you need to repeat a phrase to yourself in order to reassure yourself that you are not a bad person or will not do a bad thing we will ask you to do something more constructive
• Posting signs or notes around your house stating the feared idea.
• If you need to google symptoms or check things we will help you let that go. 
• Going to places and doing activities that bring on the thoughts.

As you do this, the thought gradually loses its impact, and even boredom can result. It is very difficult to be bored and scared at the same time.

Confronting the fear directly allows you to be able to live with the risk associated with the anxiety or OCD that once took over your lives. Some may consider exposure therapy unsafe, but you won’t be asked to do anything that is harmful to you. Your therapist will work with you to build a hierarchy of fears for you to overcome and coach you through it step by step making adjustments along the way helping you stay motivated and complete the steps. 

The point of the treatment is to help anxiety and OCD sufferers realise that there’s no need to always remove or eradicate the source of fear and tension that make their lives uncomfortable. Most importantly, this can help them learn that it’s perfectly possible to live a normal life while confronting one’s fears.

Instead of avoiding the cause of one’s perceived dangers and fears, this kind of therapy may help you be able to realistically make assessments towards the risks of your actions and push you to thrive and survive. You can find ways of reaching for your dreams despite the consequences and uncertainty, and you can at least see for yourself that it’s through confronting the things that make you afraid that can make you much stronger. 

Once the exposure component of therapy is complete, your therapist can help you deal with underlying thought patterns or emotional triggers that allowed this phobia to set in so you can deal with some of the contributing and underlying causes of your fears. 

Conclusion: Exposure Therapy To Manage Anxiety and OCD

Exposure therapy is the most effective way to overcome  anxiety and OCD. The various factors and elements surrounding exposure therapy and its implementation may prove apt when it comes to helping anxiety and OCD-afflicted individuals be able to finally have better ways to mitigate their symptoms and the impact of their mental health concerns and achieve a much better life for themselves. However, do remember that exposure therapy is best done under the recommendation and guidance of a psychologist with significant experience in OCD and Anxiety, as they can help make sure the kind of exposure therapy used on you or your loved one is something tailored not just for their condition, but their goals and objectives as well.

Anxiety and OCD treatment at Aresolution

Our team has significant experience helping suffers from OCD and anxiety overcome their anxiety through structured cognitive behavioral therapy and Exposure Therapy for OCD. 

We help you identify all of your OCD related anxieties and unhelpful thinking you have developed and let go of them one by one so you can live a happier and more fulfilled life. 

Take the next step in letting go of anxiety and OCD and make an appointment today.