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My Unlikely Exposure & Response Prevention session

In my search for OCD treatment I’ve worked with a couple of therapists who emphasized ERP – a technique, from my understanding, intended to desensitize you to a “trigger.” The idea is to intentionally expose yourself to a situation that would trigger your OCD and then resist the compulsion that you would do to calm the anxiety.

I’ve had some success with it. But the most success I had was actually an inadvertent ERP I performed on myself before I even knew there was such a technique.

I used to have this OCD thing where I’d be driving along and out of nowhere think I hit someone. In my mind I was convinced I’d hit someone, never mind that I didn’t actually feel the car hit anything. At most, I went over a bump in the road. That was enough to convince me I’d killed someone.

So one day I was driving home from work on the 101 Freeway between Ventura and Santa Barbara in Southern California. The route goes by a large cross on top of the hill above the San Buenaventura Mission. Another OCD trait of mine is if I see a cross or other religious symbol, I must acknowledge it with my full attention, pay it respect or something terrible will happen.

On this evening, I looked over my right shoulder to acknowledge the cross, while I was driving about 65 mph, and I suddenly I felt my car slam into something. Part of me wanted to believe this was just like the other times I “knew” I’d hit something, but I just wasn’t sure. I recall my heart racing, my hands feeling clammy, my head spinning.

I drove to the next exit, got off the freeway, and got back on going the other direction. As I passed the spot where I thought I hit something, I saw cars pulled to the side of the freeway and people milling around.

Oh my God, this time I really had hit something and I killed someone. That’s what my OCD was telling me. And it was hard to deny it.

As terrified as I was, I got back off the freeway and got back on going the original direction. When I arrived at the spot on the freeway, I could see the lanes were covered in red. Blood?

I pulled off the road, got out of my car and soon realized that I and everyone else milling about all thought we had hit something. The fire department and police were called, they studied the red, I asked them to check under my car for a body because I thought I saw something hanging down below the bumper. They found nothing.

Then they scanned the hillside off the road and also found nothing.

In the end, they determined it was some kind of prank. A can of red paint maybe. Whatever it was, it was meant to horrify drivers as they hit it.

It worked.

And remarkably, in the 20 years since then, I haven’t once thought I hit someone while driving.
I’ve got to believe that’s ERP, or a version of ERP.

I exposed myself to one of my greatest triggers, to such an intense degree, and I survived. Now my brain knows the difference between really hitting something and not really hitting something.
It’s hard for me to even recount that incident – the emotions still seem fresh.

But I believe it helped me address my OCD.

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