ERP Therapy Sucks

I was recently diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I was like "woah" and then I was like "duh".

But "OCD" is just a diagnosis. I don't care about labels -- I care about treatment. I want results.

So I started NOCD's program a few weeks ago. It's good, but it's not what I expected. I thought it would be stuff like "tell me about your childhood" and "how does that make you feel?". Nah. It's just "enumerate your fears and let's go purposefully do all those things". It really sucks. But that's the whole point.

This is the essence of exposure & response prevention (ERP) therapy. You purposefully provoke fear/anxiety without resorting to your usual coping mechanisms. This feedback shows your brain the futility of familiar rituals. All this time, you've been experiencing anxiety with extra steps.

ERP therapy seems valuable beyond OCD treatment. I suspect that most people could benefit from listing fears and systematically tackling them.

Luckily, LLMs significantly reduce the effort/cost of therapy experiments. Consider trying the following prompt:

Please guide me through a round of ERP therapy. Start by listing universal sources of fear/discomfort/anxiety.

If you find this process useful, consider trying it with a licensed human professional.

Anyway, ERP sucks. I hope you try it.