Exposure & Response Prevention =
learning how to be responsible and relaxed

People often assume ERP = fancy anxiety management techniques they will have to use for the rest of their lives. Other times, people believe ERP requires torturing themselves if they want to get better—“no pain, no gain.” In reality, your brain changes in response to what you learn in treatment. Your initial response to your triggers becomes way more neutral, and fancy anxiety management techniques become unnecessary. In addition, we can set up your brain to learn what it needs to learn through a short series of challenging but doable learning exercises. Think about it like a helpful course of physical therapy, where the exercises and stretches are supposed to feel “good hard, not bad hard.” The final misconception I hear a lot: the worry that if you relax your standards, you’ll become negligent and reckless about the things that matter to you most. ERP is actually about learning to make your decisions freely and logically, without compulsively trying to ensure certainty about the things none of us can know. We can identify strategies for decision-making that feel responsible enough, but that also leave enough room for living and even enjoying your life.