How We Treat
EXPOSURE THERAPY
EXPOSURE THERAPY is the way to successfully treat many symptoms, from simple phobias to complex trauma. The American Psychological Association website has a detailed description of what exposure therapy is. Recommended reading is here.
Clinicians at BHBA have expertise in behavioral exposure therapy and have successful outcomes across multiple diagnostic categories:
Phobias
Panic Disorder
Social Anxiety Disorder
Avoidant Personality Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and OCPD
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Successful treatment outcomes can lead to:
Habituation: over time, reactions to feared objects or situations decrease
Extinction: can weaken previously learned associations between feared objects, activities or situations and bad outcomes.
Self-efficacy: develop belief in ones ability to confront fears and manage emotions
Emotional processing: during exposure, new learning occurs about the feared object, activities or situations, and can increase comfort with the experience of fear
You and your therapist will collaboratively develop a treatment plan specific to your particular concern. You will be oriented to what strategies will be used - in-vivo, imaginal, interoceptive, graded, flooding or systematic desensitization and how they will be used.
BHBA TREATMENT OPTIONS
EXPOSURE AND RESPONSE PREVENTION THERAPY (EX/RP or ERP) for OCD
Intensive: Two treatment planning sessions, fifteen 90-minute sessions for 3 weeks
Twice weekly: Two treatment planning sessions, fifteen 2-hour sessions, 2x a week, for 8 weeks
ALL SESSIONS INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:
Exposure in imagination 45 minute
Exposure in-vivo 45 minutes
Homework assignments 15 minutes
WHAT IS EXPOSURE AND RESPONSE PREVENTION?
Exposure and Response Prevention (EX/RP or ERP) is a Cognitive Behavioral Treatment (CBT) that trains you to stop engaging in compulsions when you are anxious. ERP trained therapists at BHBA received intensive training through Dr. Edna B. Foa’s anxiety clinic at the University of Pennsylvania and some have received intensive weekly consultation for several complex OCD cases from Dr. Marty Franklin, Director of the Child and Adolescent OCD, Tic, Trich, and Anxiety Group (COTTAGe) at University of Pennsylvania, through the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF).
EX/RP is designed to break the associations between distress and the objects, situations, or thoughts that produce this distress (obsession), as well as the association between carrying out compulsive behavior and decreasing the distress (compulsion). Exposure involves purposely confronting objects or situations that prompt distress and anxiety, and to stay in those situations for a period of time that lasts until the symptoms decrease by themselves. Prolonged exposure without engaging in compulsions can promote habituation, safety learning, and put to rest the mistaken belief that something terrible will happen if you do not engage in compulsions. Response prevention is practiced to break the habit of engaging in compulsions by facing your fears without resorting to compulsions, and thereby gradually becoming less anxious. Your therapist will teach you how to stop compulsions and you will learn more effective ways of coping and managing your discomfort that do not involve compulsions.
WHAT IS OCD?
OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is a disorder characterized by the misinterpretation of intrusive thoughts as highly significant, activating the body's fight or flight response to threats. When unwanted negative thoughts are perceived as threats, ineffective solutions such as obsessions and compulsions develop to protect us and reduce our discomfort and anxiety through avoidance or escape. Obsessions are exaggerated thought responses to situations that pose little if any real threat, while compulsions are the excessive behaviors serving to reduce or neutralize stress. Although compulsions reduce fear in the short-term, they reinforce the misinterpretation of fears and situations therefore perpetuating thinking mistakes.
SYMPTOMS OF OCD
People with OCD spend a lot of energy avoiding situations that provoke a fear response, which includes obsessional thinking. OCD is unique to each individual. For some, it can be as subtle as not touching a certain surface due to fears of contamination; and for others, obsessions are more overt like driving out of your way to avoid a landmark. Obsessions and compulsions are not always obvious. At times they are covert, such as attempting to neutralize an obsessional thought by engaging in a mental ritual. Avoiding situations, people, and thoughts can severely restrict people from their normal functioning. Compulsions are intentional behaviors meant to reduce the likelihood of harm, uncertainty, or distress. Because compulsions function as an avoidant behavior, they therefore maintain and strengthen the underlying obsessional fears. Compulsions often take the form of repeated washing, checking, arranging, repeating, etc. Both avoidance and escape contribute to the continuance and strengthening of obsessional fears.
HOW TO TREAT OCD
Everyone has unwanted thoughts resembling obsessions, but habitual thought suppression is not a recommended solution, being one of the ways obsessions can develop. So how do we treat OCD? Once you believe that obsessional situations and thoughts do not represent a high risk of harm, you will feel fewer urges to avoid situations or perform compulsions. Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is a treatment based on this idea and will help you to (a) correct faulty beliefs about your thoughts, (b) weaken the associations between certain thoughts and feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and distress, and (c) reduce the urges to avoid or perform compulsions.