Mastering the Subtleties of ERP for OCD: Preparing Your Clients for Success - 6 hours
To access the discount form for registering for multiple workshops or participants, please click here.
When & Where:
- Date: Friday, May 29, 2026
- If you cannot attend this workshop on 5/29, you can register for the previously recorded on-demand version here: https://www.theknowledgetree.org/p/erp-subtleties-...
- Time: 10:30am – 5:30pm Eastern Time
- CE Hours Included: 6 (please see below for details)
- Location: Live Interactive Webinar (“Synchronous”) on Zoom
- Investment: $140 before Friday, May 15th at 5:00pm Eastern Time, $160 after
- Presented by: Shala Nicely, LPC (see bio below)
- Workshop Recording: A recording of this workshop will be available to review for 60 days, and should be available within two weeks of the live presentation. However, participants must attend live to receive the "Synchronous" CE Certificate.
- Instruction Level: Intermediate
- Target Audience: Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists
Educational Objectives:
After completing this workshop in its entirety, you will be able to:
- Evaluate clients with OCD to identify if symptom severity matches the treatment intensity you can offer vs. those who need a higher level of care and use assessments to develop a comprehensive understanding of symptoms.
- Create a solid foundation for ERP with J.O.Y., a really helpful acronym Jon Hershfield and Shala coined in their book, Everyday Mindfulness for OCD: Tips, Tricks, and Skills for Living Joyfully.
- Discuss the risks of ERP with a client and then help the client jump into their first ERP experience with an empowering attitude and multiple tools to combat physical and mental compulsions.
- Apply key skills to clients’ ERP work, including the essence of response prevention, self-compassion, accountability, a new take on mindfulness, and more on the importance of attitude.
- Discuss ERP homework feedback effectively, appraise clients’ homework and treatment progress, and troubleshoot obstacles that can get in the way of clients successfully doing ERP homework.
- Assess treatment progress for signs of subtleties that can sabotage clients’ recoveries, including hidden compulsions, self-punishment as a ritual, post-traumatic OCD, technology-focused compulsions, and more.
Workshop Description:
Have you ever found that doing exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP) with clients who have OCD can become a little more complicated than you initially expected … and that you and/or the client end up feeling a little stuck as a result? If so, you’re not alone! The science of ERP, the evidence-based therapy for OCD, is relatively straightforward—clients learn to tolerate uncertainty by repeatedly facing their fears (exposure) without doing compulsions (response prevention). However, the art of implementing ERP is often quite subtle and can make a big difference in a client’s ability to reclaim their lives.
In this workshop, we’ll dive into these subtleties at every stage of treatment so you can set your clients with OCD up for ERP success. We’ll begin with how to thoroughly assess a client’s OCD (and other) symptoms and whether they match the treatment intensity that you offer. We’ll then do a live session-length demo of conducting the first exposure with a client, including why it’s so important to help the client radically shift their relationship with anxiety and OCD, and how to interrupt mental rituals that can sabotage the exposure. Next, we’ll talk in detail about the add-ons to ERP that can help clients take their practice to a new level, including self-compassion and a new take on mindfulness for OCD. Since most of a client’s progress comes from doing ERP homework on their own, we’ll cover obstacles clients often face in doing exercises between sessions and how to overcome them. Finally, we’ll review how to address a variety of subtleties that can undermine recovery success, including hidden compulsions and the presence of conditions such as post-traumatic OCD or self-punishment as a ritual, as well as how to instill in clients an ERP lifestyle so they can keep their lives their own once they graduate from therapy.
Course Outline:
- Section 1: Matching OCD severity and treatment intensity (40 mins)
- Matching OCD severity and treatment intensity, and why this is so important
- Assessments used to assess OCD symptoms and severity
- The importance of medication
- Material covered in first sessions with clients, including Y-BOCS-II, obsessions and rituals log, the OCD cycle and how ERP interrupts that cycle, and the 4Cs of OCD.
- Section 2: The first ERP session (50 mins)
- A recording of a simulated first session with a client that includes:
- J.O.Y (and that jumping into anxiety is not artificial
- The risks of ERP
- What’s your level? And the importance of attitude
- Shoulders Back!
- The use of dynamic scripting and empowering statements
- Debriefing and conveying the goal of ERP
- Homework planning, proactive vs reactive ERP, and forms
- Why I ask what people liked/didn’t like or found helpful/not helpful at the end of session
- A recording of a simulated first session with a client that includes:
- Section 3: Key ERP Skills (90 mins)
- Attitude
- Want anxiety and triggers
- Turn “I have to” into “I want to,” especially around ERP itself
- Separate OCD and the client
- Self-compassion
- Create self-compassion statement (long and condensed)
- Use love languages to show yourself some love
- Maintain accountability by avoiding self-indulgence
- Response prevention
- Act as though obsession content is irrelevant physically and mentally
- A new take on mindfulness
- Remember Mindfulness = ERP
- Mindfully and non-compulsively focus on triggers through MOMNs
- Ignore OCD using Shoulders Back! Man in the Park
- Attitude
- Section 4: Getting homework done (90 minutes)
- Why ERP homework matters
- Goals of ERP and ERP homework
- Providing effective homework feedback
- Assessing treatment progress
- Overcoming ERP homework obstacles
- Section 5: Avoiding pitfalls that can sabotage your recovery (90 minutes)
- The “trying on compulsions” compulsion
- When emotions turn into compulsions:
- Self-punishment as an OCD ritual
- The truth about people pleasing
- Micro monitoring symptoms
- Post-traumatic OCD
- Optimization OCD: Your productivity does not equal your worth
- Technology compulsions
Workshop Schedule (Eastern Time):
- 10:00am - 10:30am | Sign-In and Welcome
- 10:30am - 12:00pm | Session
- 12:00pm - 12:10pm | Break
- 12:10pm - 1:40pm | Session
- 1:40pm - 2:20pm | Lunch Break
- 2:20pm - 3:50pm | Session
- 3:50pm - 4:00pm | Break
- 4:00pm - 5:30pm | Session
- 5:30pm | Continuing Education Certificates Available
Presented by: Shala Nicely, LPC
Shala Nicely, LPC, is the author of Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life, and coauthor of Everyday Mindfulness for OCD: Tips, Tricks & Skills for Living Joyfully with Jon Hershfield, MFT. She is a counselor and cognitive behavioral therapist in metro Atlanta, GA, specializing in the treatment of OCD, anxiety disorders, and the dynamic co-morbidity between trauma/PTSD and OCD. Over the past decade, Shala has given numerous talks on OCD and its treatment at national conferences and was the keynote speaker for the 2013 IOCDF national conference. She sends the monthly Shoulders Back newsletter to thousands of subscribers each month and writes several blogs, including one for Psychology Today that offers an inside perspective on life with OCD. She has also finished writing her first mystery novel—featuring a crime-solving protagonist who has OCD—about the true price of secrets we keep from ourselves.
6 CE Hours Included - Details by License Type Below:
- PSYCHOLOGISTS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company maintains responsibility for this program and its content. For more detailed information on the current CE ruling in Georgia, or if you are licensed in another state or country, please click here.
- COUNSELORS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company has been approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEP), ACEP No. 7153. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. Please click here for more detailed information.
- SOCIAL WORKERS: TKT has applied for approval for this workshop through the Georgia Society for Clinical Social Work (GSCSW). If you are licensed in another state or country, please click here for more detailed information.
- MARRIAGE & FAMILY THERAPISTS: TKT has applied for approval for this workshop through the Georgia Association for Marriage & Family Therapy (GAMFT). If you are licensed in another state or country, please click here for more detailed information.
Registration: To register for individual workshops, you may use our online payment option, or to pay by check you may print and complete the Registration Form and mail or fax it to our office. The registration form is available on our website: www.theknowledgetree.org. Registration is permitted until the time the workshop begins, unless otherwise specified.
Multiple Workshop Special: There is a 10% Discount with registration for two workshops. There is a 15% Discount with registrations for three or four workshops. There is a 20% Discount with registration for five or more workshops.
Refund/Cancellation Policy: If you can no longer attend a workshop you have registered for, you can either receive a credit for another workshop or receive a refund if you are within the refund policy period. Refunds will be given for cancellations received at least five days prior to the workshop. More information about refund/cancellation can be found here.
Attendance Policy: 100% attendance and completion of a course evaluation is required at any CE program in order to receive credit for that CE program. No partial credit is given. Certificates of completion will be available in each attendee’s account once the broadcast has ended and the course evaluation completed.
ADA Requests: We will make every effort to accommodate any reasonable ADA request. Please call or email us at least two weeks prior to the event. Payment and registration are required to fulfill an ADA request.
No Conflict Policy: Neither The Knowledge Tree nor its speakers have received any commercial support for this program or its contents and will not receive any commercial support prior to or during this program.
System Requirements: Live Interactive Webinars are facilitated via Zoom. System requirements for the Zoom platform are linked at our FAQ page.
We are an approved vendor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for easy reimbursement of educational expenses for VA employees.
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