Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a widely used and effective therapeutic approach for treating conditions like Dermatillomania (skin picking disorder). ERP involves exposing individuals to situations or stimuli that trigger their compulsive skin picking behavior and then preventing them from engaging in the picking ritual. Here are some exposure exercises that an OCD therapist might use to help someone with skin picking:

Deciding whether to tackle OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) or anxiety first depends on the severity of each condition, how they interact, and your individual needs. It's important to note that OCD is actually classified as an anxiety disorder, as it involves intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors driven by anxiety.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can manifest in myriad ways, including being focused around the act of during. At Kairos Wellness Collective, we treat individuals who are limited by fears or compulsions related to driving, which might reduce their ability to earn a living, transport family, or even leave the home.

Arachnophobia is an extreme and irrational fear of spiders or other arachnids, such as scorpions. It is one of the most common specific phobias, affecting millions of people worldwide.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the gold standard treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and has proven to be highly effective for many individuals. However, there are situations where alternative or additional approaches may be considered or combined with ERP.

Your child CAN deal with serious anxiety.  They will cope with anxious feelings. Anxious feelings are transient.  Parents don’t need to fix anxiety for their children.  Yes, your child will feel fear during Exposure Response Prevention treatment. They may come out of session rattled or irritable. However, long term, ERP builds your child’s resilience to their fear. Exposures are necessary for habituation, even if they are unpleasant in the moment and shortly thereafter.

In ERP (Exposure Response Prevention for OCD), individuals are exposed to anxiety-provoking situations or triggers and are encouraged to resist engaging in compulsive behaviors or rituals. The goal is to gradually reduce the power of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Urge-surfing can be used to support individuals during these exposure exercises.

A fear hierarchy, also known as a hierarchy of fears or exposure hierarchy, is a tool used in Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) gradually confront their fears and anxieties. The hierarchy is a list of situations, objects, or activities that trigger obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, ranked from least to most anxiety-provoking.

At Kairos Wellness Collective, we consider the role of parents in child therapy to be crucial, and a significant predictor of positive outcome. Primary caregivers have a significant influence on their child's emotional, social, and cognitive development.

At Kairos Wellness Collective, each clinician has an individual style to achieve the same result: effective and timely OCD treatment so that clients may move on with their lives unfettered by intrusive thoughts, compulsions, and maladaptive behaviors. Many treatment modalities exist for OCD work, including ERP, iCBT, and ACT.

Meditation is an effective tool to help with OCD, especially when combined with Exposure Response Prevention (ERP). ERP is a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy used to treat OCD by gradually exposing the patient to their OCD triggers and helping them resist engaging in rituals. By combining meditation with ERP, patients can learn how to observe their thoughts and feelings without responding in unhealthy ways.

Grounding exercises can be incredibly beneficial for managing anxiety spikes after Exposure Response Prevention creates some nervous system disregulation.  

Grounding exercises help you take back control of a hijacked nervous system and re-engage in therapy.  

While it is ideal to work with a dedicated therapist for your OCD and Anxiety treatment, some people need to begin or continue the process outside of formal therapy.  Fortunately, the design of an exposure can be a learned skill. The first step is to isolate a trigger, and the compulsions that you wish to target. 

While many people find comfort in the cleansing experience of a shower, for those of us with OCD, it is a common area to be gripped with compulsions.

As a holistic OCD clinic, we are constantly examining the ways in which we can provide more comprehensive services to heal both clients and their family systems. When we utilize the intervention of Exposure Response Prevention, we are leaning into a very different type of therapy. Rather than soothing our clients, we are purposefully moving towards their fears.

For an OCD voice, everything is catastrophic, incredibly important, urgent, and definitely not funny. However, when we can step back and laugh at some of the requirements that our OCD places on us, we can truly see the absurdity in its rules!  Laughing at our OCD makes it smaller and weaker.

In Exposure Response Prevention, we are asking kiddos to sit with discomfort and have a tolerance of uncertainty. Parents must go through this process as well in order to properly model and guide their children towards healthier coping strategies.  

Exposure Response Prevention is, quite simply, the art of finding the area just outside your comfort zone and pushing yourself to spend a little time there.

For many of us with OCD, we develop avoidance compulsions around socializing. Even those of us who do not have a social anxiety presentation of OCD can feel alienated from others because we fear judgement for our behaviors.

For those dealing with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, planning can become a compulsion that temporarily soothes the fear of the unknown. OCD tries to attain certainty about the future, and this can come in the form of plans. Some planning is necessary and useful, but over-planning detracts from our ability to be in the present.