Exposure Therapy
What is exposure therapy?
Exposure therapy helps people face what they fear in small, planned steps until the fear fades. Avoidance keeps anxiety alive. Each time someone avoids a feared situation, they never get to learn it was survivable, so the fear stays the same size or grows. Exposure reverses that.
It is one of the most effective treatments for anxiety disorders, phobias, panic disorder and PTSD.
Exposure and response prevention (ERP)
ERP is the form of exposure used for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Two things happen together:
Exposure. Gradually coming into contact with what triggers the obsession, such as touching a doorknob or leaving the house without checking the stove.
Response prevention. Choosing not to do the compulsion that usually follows, like washing, checking or asking for reassurance.
The anxiety rises, then drops on its own. Each time, the brain learns that the compulsion wasn't what kept you safe. McLean Hospital has a helpful plain-language explanation, and ERP is considered a first-line treatment for OCD.
How it's done
Client and clinician build a list of feared situations, ranked from mild to hard. Work starts near the bottom. Nobody is forced into anything, and the client decides when to move up. What feels impossible at the start often feels routine by the end.
Exposure in real places
A lot of exposure therapy happens in an office, using imagination or small props. That helps, but the fear usually lives somewhere specific: the highway, the grocery store, the elevator at work.
Sanare clinicians do exposure work with clients in those places. A client afraid of driving might start by sitting in a parked car with their clinician, then drive around the block, then take a short trip on a side street, and eventually get on I-25. Having support right there makes harder steps possible sooner, and the progress carries into everyday life because it happened in everyday life.
Exposure therapy in Denver
We work with adults 18 and older across the Denver and Boulder metro, seeing clients one to five times a week. Contact Sanare or call 303.476.1974.