Here Are Five Questions To Ask the In-Network Therapist You’ve Found To Ensure They Can Best Treat Your OCD

Thank you for sharing that you found an in-network therapist to treat your OCD.

 Many people on our NOCD team live with OCD, myself included. We also understand what successful OCD treatment looks like. Regardless of where or who you receive your treatment from—NOCD or not—I want to ensure that you get the best treatment for your OCD. 

People don’t always receive the most effective care for OCD. Many credentialed providers aren’t specifically trained to treat OCD using exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP).  

It’s very easy to get the wrong kind of care for OCD. What I’m trying to do is prevent you from taking a long, time-consuming, distressing, and expensive detour on your path to recovery. 

I strongly suggest asking your therapist the following set of five questions before starting OCD treatment. I want to assure you that you are well within your rights to ask these questions to any provider. At the end of the day, this is your health and wellbeing, and any OCD specialist should be open, friendly, and knowledgeable when fielding these five questions.

If they can give you the answers detailed below, you will likely be on the path to getting your life back. If they can’t, I suggest you reconsider whether this provider is the best fit for you and your OCD. 

Question 1: What type of treatment do you provide for people with OCD? 

Answer: Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy is the go-to treatment since it is the gold-standard, long-term therapy intervention for OCD. If your therapist answers this question with confidence, that’s likely a good sign. 

When doing ERP therapy, many OCD specialists will also integrate principles of mindfulness and acceptance commitment therapy. In addition to ERP, some people are prescribed SSRI medication to help them manage OCD symptoms, which eventually gets them to a place where they can do ERP therapy. Your therapist may bring up the benefits of taking medication for OCD. When considering SSRI medication, be sure to understand all of the potential side effects with your doctor. 

Tips For Asking the Question: Be sure to not use the terms “Exposure and Response Prevention” or “ERP” in the question first. Instead, let your therapist state for themselves that they provide ERP. 

Question 2: What types of taboo intrusive thoughts have people with OCD shared with you in the past? 

Answer: A true OCD specialist should offer at least a few interesting stories about OCD cases that may be considered taboo. In fact, he or she may even answer the question saying, “There isn’t an OCD thought that I haven’t heard before, so try me by sharing some of the ones that you’re experiencing.” Therapists who truly become specialized to treat OCD typically have a personality type that embraces discomfort. 

Tips for Asking the Question: Let the therapist do most of the talking here. If the therapist gets into the weeds and starts talking about the variety of subtypes that he or she has seen or shares stories related to taboo, aggressive, or sexual intrusive thoughts, you might have the right therapist in front of you. If, on the other hand, the therapist broadly talks about the hallmark symptoms of OCD or says something such as “Everyone has a little OCD,” watch out. 

Question 3: Have you received extra training to specifically treat OCD? 

Answer: The therapist should say yes. In addition to being a licensed psychologist, social worker, marriage and family therapist, or counselor, a licensed therapist who specializes in OCD will have gone through additional training. For instance, true OCD specialists might have studied under a world-renowned OCD expert, completed a specific and reputable training such as The Behavior Therapy Training Institute (BTTI), or worked within an ERP-specific treatment network. 

Tips for Asking the Question: A true OCD specialist may actually commend you for asking the question and will likely be delighted to share more about their training. If the therapist seems to be annoyed by the question, he or she might actually be defensive due to a lack of expertise. Or worse, they may be someone who has claimed false expertise in treating OCD. Unfortunately, that happens quite often.

Question 4: Can you help me make my intrusive thoughts, images, or urges go away?

Answer: The answer here is “no.” The goal of OCD treatment isn’t to make your OCD thoughts, images, and urges go away; it’s to make sure that you can change your reaction to them so that eventually, they stop bothering you as much. A therapist whose expertise is treating OCD will explain this, while a therapist who doesn’t know as much might be more agreeable to the question and make false promises. 

Tips for Asking the Question: You might want to ask for specific examples of how the prospective therapist helps people respond to their OCD thoughts. An experienced therapist might give examples of how he or she helps patients do “response prevention” even if they don’t say verbatim that it’s response prevention. 

Question 5: When treating OCD, do you typically stay in an office setting, or do you venture out with your patients to additional locations? 

Answer: Good OCD specialists will get creative with their treatment exercises, and many will go to different locations with you if possible. Telehealth has actually made it easier for therapists to venture out into the community with you since the convenience of meeting with them over a screen means you can take them with you to other places to confront – and overcome – your fears and anxieties in your daily life. Therefore, it isn’t surprising to learn that many specialists believe that OCD is more effectively treated in a virtual environment. 

Tips for Asking the Question: If the therapist avoids getting specific about some of their past treatment exercises, it might be a good idea to ask additional questions. In this case, you should consider specifically addressing the types of treatment exercises other patients with your subtype(s) have done in the past with the therapist. Although ERP therapy is the gold-standard treatment for all OCD subtypes, there are specific types of treatment exercises therapists often conduct for each subtype.  

How a new therapist answers the questions above should give you a feel for their experience of treating people with OCD. If you don’t feel confident in the therapist’s answers, Don’t hesitate to keep looking. 

If you are already a few sessions in with your current therapist and you do not see improvement, it’s time to consider working with someone with a background and training in treating OCD specifically with ERP. 

NOCD can guarantee that each therapist in our directory has been trained in ERP, and our world-renowned clinical leadership team invests in training and actively mentoring them. Further, NOCD Therapists have the training to do personalized treatment exercises in a telehealth setting, and many accept insurance. If you are interested in giving NOCD a second look, reboot your search for expert help by browsing the NOCD Therapist Directory. 

If you’d like to do further research, check out the International OCD Foundation Therapist Directory. The IOCDF is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to helping people with OCD get treatment and live healthily. They do great work and also run training for OCD treatment for licensed therapists looking to treat OCD with ERP. 

If you’d like to discuss this further, you can email our team at peeradvisors@NOCDhelp.com