Don't Make These 2 ERP Mistakes!
Danielle Thornton, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, breaks down why ERP often fails: treating exposure itself as a way to feel better instead of sitting with uncertainty, and doing compulsions like rumination or safety behaviors during or after exposure. The fix is pairing exposure with actual response prevention.
Chapters
Sam.
Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach who has fully recovered from anxiety and multiple OCD subsets. And I've been helping others do the same since 2018. Today we're going to talk about the two reasons why you're doing ERP. And maybe it's not working. ERP is actually fairly simple. Once you understand, takes time, but it really does work every single time. But we have to do it properly. And that is why I always suggest working with an OCD specialist like myself or someone else who specializes in ERP or a program that's, you know, made to support you like the path so that you can learn it effectively and you have the follow up support again. I see a lot of people trying to learn it online, but to learn it effectively, you really have to have someone that you can talk through it, learn it, and then practice it and work through maybe why it's not working. But we are going to talk today about two reasons why it may not be working for you. And they're really the only two. If you can eliminate these, ERP is going to work very well for you. The first one is that when you're doing exposure, it's become the compulsion. So a compulsion is something that we do to get rid of the discomfort or gain certainty or perfection, you know, get closer to perfection. Okay, so let's say that you've learned about imaginal exposure exercises and you've learned the technique of maybe, maybe not, right? Where you get the intrusive thought, what if? Dot, dot, dot. It's not always what if, but it's an example what if, you know, with pedophilia, ocd, what if I am attracted to that little girl, right? And so you recognize the intrusive thought and you go, okay, I'm going to practice exposure right now. I'm going to imaginally expose myself by saying, maybe I did, maybe I didn't, I don't know. And then you're going to practice response prevention by not giving it any more attention. Okay, it sounds simple. It can take practice. Compulsions are the things we do to get rid of the discomfort. So if you start doing exposure exercises with the intention of, the main intention of getting rid of the discomfort, it's the compulsion, and it's not going to be very effective. The purpose of exposure is to trigger ourselves, to put ourselves in an uncomfortable situation or to mentally lean into uncertainty. So that's the purpose. Now. It's quite common. And it happened to me where I Was feeling anxious and I'm like, okay, I know exposure works, let me go do my exposure exercise. And I found it wasn't working very well because again, it had become the compulsion. So if this happens to you, just don't do it in that moment, right? Which is probably uncomfortable because this is an exposure of that particular situation. But do it later when you're more willing to actually go lean into the uncertainty of it. Okay, if you can shift your perspective to, nope, I'm not trying to get rid of the discomfort here. I'm going to lean into the uncertainty right now, then great, if you can do that, that will be helpful too. Then you're back to doing it to expose versus to as a compulsion to get rid of anything. Okay, but while you're doing an imaginal exposure, you're not trying to get the discomfort down. You're not hyper focused on the discomfort. You are just doing the exposure and you will feel the discomfort leave your body if you're doing it properly. Okay, it may be quickly, it may be slowly, but it will happen if you're doing it properly every single time. So reason number one, it's not working is because you're doing it as the compulsion to get rid of the discomfort. Number two is that you're doing compulsions during or after, which is actually kind of similar. So let's say you're doing an imaginal exposure exercise. You're sitting there leaning into the uncertainty that, yes, maybe this thought is true. Yep, maybe this is going to happen. Maybe. Okay.
Again, exposures to lean into the uncertainty. So if you're doing this, but you catch yourself ruminating during it, which is super common for your brain to want to ruminate because OCD doesn't want to let go, then you just don't engage with those thoughts, don't engage with the rumination, stick with the exposure, continue to lean into the uncertainty and don't engage with those thoughts. Or if you do engage with a thought, be aware of it. Bring yourself back to the exposure. If you're doing an in vivo exposure, if you're putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation physically, maybe you have harm OCD and you're putting the knives on the counter, or you have contamination OCD and you're eating something you normally wouldn't eat, then it's important not to do any of those other compulsions or safety behaviors while you're doing the exposure or even after. Now you can work your way up. It doesn't mean that you have to be perfect. But the more compulsions you're doing during. The longer it's going to take that exposure to be effective and the less compulsions you do, the better. So we have to reduce compulsions down to zero to be in that recovery stage. But the lower they get, the better you're going to feel and the closer you're going to be. It's also very important to identify all of your compulsions, which is something that I help people do. So these are the two reasons why your exposure may be less effective or ineffective. And again, hopefully you're working with an ERP specialist that's teaching this to you because this stuff is very, very important. But these are the reasons why it's really difficult to learn this online because everybody's OCD is different, their intrusive thoughts are different. And it's important to be able to ask questions to really learn it properly, because you're going to have to. You're going to be using this for the rest of your life whenever uncertainty or doubt shows up, even though you can get to that full recovery stage. The way that we stay there is by knowing that we're going to get fear based thoughts or uncertainty in life. And when we do, we know what to do with it so we don't get off track. Right? So if you want help with this, just check out the link in the description below. I have coaching options, I have cost effective memberships. Recovery is possible. It's just a matter of getting the right knowledge, the right help and support through the process. If you need anything else, please comment in the description below as well and I will talk to you very, very soon. Have a good day.
If you start, then start imagining it, picturing it, analyzing, seeking reassurance from somebody, any of the compulsions, then.
The minute of exposure you did is great, but you went right back to compulsions. So it's not going to be very effective. When you're doing imaginal exposure exercises, rumination is one of the big compulsions that can start to happen. You have to stop that compulsion. You can lean into the uncertainty imaginally and not engage in thinking about it, analyzing it, picturing it, doing any of that during the exposure, and really every other time in your life, you have to stop doing that. And you may have to stop that over and over and over and over again. But the more you practice it, the slower it gets, the lower it gets, and eventually you're not doing it anymore. So doing compulsions during or after is. It doesn't mean that the exposure itself wasn't effective. You just went right back into the OCD cycle. So exposure has to go with response prevention. You have to do the exposure and then stop responding by doing compulsions. They both have to go together. Okay. Otherwise it's not going to be very effective.
