Introducing my ERP Therapist

He's going to show up quite often in this blog, so I'm going to call him "Leonard, " and introduce him as my wise, sharply observant Exposure and Response Prevention therapist. To go with the metaphor of an owl, Leonard has spent enough years treating people with OCD, that he can hone in on a rodent-like obsession scurrying through the fields and snap it right up. He likes to tell me he's helping me become my own therapist, and encouraging to trust my own thinking--which the OCD vehemently opposes!

His ability to hunt the feared consequence of any given obsession, and uncannily predict the kinds of protests the OCD will make to any given challenge, is truly invaluable. He doesn't get mired in the mud of obsessional thinking. He's not a mind-reader; he's just had 7 or 8 years with the bulk of his clients having OCD.

This is the difference between him and my previous therapist, who though she helped me with everything but the OCD, thought my continuous websearching at work was because I was bored. Yeah, I'm bored at work, but I was also avoiding doing even the most basic of tasks because I might not do them perfectly. OCD tends to form around a grain of truth, and a therapist who doesn't understand ERP therapy, or the ways of OCD, will get sidetracked pretty quickly.