South Pasadena EXPOSURE AND RESPONSE PREVENTION (ERP)
OCD, Panic Disorder and Phobia Therapy In Person in South Pasadena and Online in California
Exposure and response prevention Therapy for phobias, ocd and ANXIETY
Do you struggle with phobias or panic attacks, or get stuck in obsessive compulsive loops?
Are you starting to feel like you’re putting more and more energy into avoiding feared situations or engaging in safety rituals?
Exposure based therapy can help you regain control and find your inner equilibrium.
At Carter Psychotherapy Collective in South Pasadena, California, we offer Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) as part of how we help with anxiety, phobias, panic attacks and OCD, including postpartum OCD. We are also skilled at incorporating ERP as part of a broader therapy for certain eating disorders when relevant and appropriate to your needs.
Our ERP therapists can support you in getting back to what you want to be doing with your time.
FEARS WE HELP WITH
We support clients with themes such as:
driving and flying
choking or vomiting
illness and health anxiety
body dysmorphia
contamination
panic and fainting
medical appointments
fear of hurting self or others
animals and insects
We are also very experienced with helping clients with eating disorders introduce feared foods and decrease ED behaviors using ERP.
HOW EXPOSURE and response prevention (erp) THERAPY WORKS
Exposure and Response Prevention therapy is an evidence-based therapy that helps you decrease fear of specific situations or sensations so that you can feel less wary and more free moving through the world around you. It is structured, gradual and focused and can be pursued on its own or as part of a broader therapy experience.
Identify triggers: Together, we'll identify the situations, thoughts, images, or sensations that tend to provoke anxiety, fear, disgust or obsessive thoughts.
Create a plan: We'll develop a personalized exposure hierarchy, starting with manageable challenges and progressing at a pace that feels appropriate. We focus on tasks that are relevant and will help you achieve specific goals in your life.
Practice facing fears: During and between our sessions, you'll gradually approach feared situations instead of avoiding them. We get creative with the use of images, talking, and planned experiences that help you move towards fears in a gradual, manageable way.
Reduce compulsions and avoidance: During exposures, you’ll practice resisting the behaviors that you’ve developed over time to try to create a feeling of safety. These behaviors often serve to reinforce and even deepen the fear, so learning to move away from them is a core feature of how you heal.
With practice, your baseline anxiety begins to decrease, and you also learn that anxiety goes away on its own - the behaviors that are keeping you trapped are no longer necessary.
Build a life that reflects who you are: Over time, your fears have less of a hold on you. You won’t have to worry so much about engaging in rituals or avoiding triggers. With that relief and extra time and energy, we can explore what it looks like to build a life that better reflects your core values and your identity.
WHO CAN BENEFIT FROM EXPOSURE and response prevention THERAPY?
Exposure and response prevention therapy is a super effective strategy for people who are afraid of specific situations and who go out of their way to avoid being faced with these situations. It is particularly helpful for people who are seeking phobia therapy, therapy for panic attacks, and therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder. It can also be a really important piece of the puzzle for clients who are working on healing from eating disorders.
ERP is ideal for people who are fed up with feeling scared or who have something on the horizon that is going to require them to face a fear they have dealt with.
It’s also ideal for people who appreciate a road map and prefer that their therapy experience have some structure.
Do you have questions about whether or not exposure and response prevention is a good fit for you, your personality, and your experience? Let’s do a consultation and we’ll help you figure out whether ERP or another modality would be the best starting place for you.
INTEGRATIVE THERAPY FOR Phobias AND FEARS: Supporting you as a whole person
In addition to offering focused Exposure and Response Prevention as a standalone treatment, our South Pasadena therapists really love integrating ERP into a broader therapy experience, incorporating other modalities that can be supportive of other elements of your experience. You can read more on our website or contact us to learn more about how we work with obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and anxiety.
Meet our South Pasadena ERP Therapists
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Lianna Kirakosyan, LMFT
Generalized anxiety, high pressure, health anxiety, OCD, eating disorders, specific phobias
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Allison Carter, LCSW, PMH-C
Generalized anxiety, perinatal anxiety, OCD, panic disorders, phobias, eating disorders
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Joshua Sullivan, LCSW
Teens and Adults, generalized anxiety, OCD, health anxiety, panic disorder, eating disorders, specific phobias
4 Steps To
Get Started
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Fill out the contact form. Share as much or as little as you’re comfortable with.
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We’ll have a 15‑minute call to answer any questions, explain how we work, and see if our approach feels like a fit.
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We’ll map what’s hardest right now, what you hope to reclaim, and begin laying the groundwork for change.
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Regular sessions to work through exposures, help you get out into the world, and provide support around other factors in your life that might be contributing to your anxiety.
NO MATTER WHAT…
Our therapists all prioritize a strong, steady therapeutic relationship and believe in the importance of attuned listening, compassion and insight. We are trained in multiple styles that help us facilitate deep exploration of your inner world, as well as allow us to be able to offer concrete strategies for beginning to have new experiences in your life.
If you are wondering if we are open to working with you and your unique constellation of experiences, please contact us to chat about what you need and which of our therapists could be a good fit.
Therapy that honors your complexity.
Therapy is available in person in our office in South Pasadena, or over video, using a free, HIPAA compliant telehealth platform.
We are LGBTQIA+ affirming and experienced in supporting clients around the intersection of mental health and body image with issues related to faith and spirituality, sexuality, gender, and race.