Exposure and Response Prevention
ERP Therapy
In Toronto
For OCD
ERP therapy in Toronto is Exposure and Response Prevention, the behavioural treatment with the largest body of trial evidence for OCD (Öst et al., 2015), in person at Yonge and Bloor or by video across Ontario. You face what triggers your OCD on purpose and practise not doing the compulsion. Think of it like the gym: a good trainer starts with what you can lift right now.
If you've tried therapy before and it didn't help your OCD, chances are it wasn't ERP. Many therapists don't specialize in it, and therapy that keeps analysing the meaning of the thought, or reassuring you, can feed the cycle instead of breaking it.
ERP runs $250 for a 50-minute session with a senior clinician or $225 with an associate clinician, online across Ontario or in person in Toronto. Limited sliding scale options are available, ask about them. The free 20-minute consultation is the place to ask whether ERP is the right fit for your OCD before you commit to anything.
How ERP Is Different
Talk therapy asks: “Why do you have these thoughts? Let's explore what they mean.”
ERP asks: “You're going to have these thoughts anyway. Let's change what you do when they show up.”
That shift, from understanding to action, is what makes ERP work when other approaches don't.
Modern ERP runs on the inhibitory learning model. The point isn't to wait for your anxiety to fade. It's to build new learning that sits alongside the fear: proof that you can handle the uncertainty without the compulsion, so the old alarm stops running the show.
What a Typical Session Looks Like
Weeks 1-2
Assessment & Hierarchy
We map your OCD: all the triggers, obsessions, compulsions, and avoidance patterns. We build an exposure hierarchy from mildest to most triggering.
Weeks 3-6
Active Exposure Begins
You start facing triggers gradually while resisting compulsions. This is the hardest part. Anxiety goes up before it comes down.
Weeks 7-12
Building Momentum
You work up the hierarchy. Each exposure builds on the last. Most people notice significant shifts during this phase.
Weeks 13-16+
Consolidation & Prevention
We solidify gains, address any remaining triggers, and build a relapse prevention plan so you know what to do if OCD tries to come back.
Looking for an ERP Therapist Near You in Toronto?
“ERP therapist near me” is a reasonable search and a frustrating one, because most therapist directories let anyone tick the OCD box. Here is what the label should actually mean. An ERP therapist builds an exposure hierarchy with you in the first two sessions, runs exposures in session rather than only assigning them, and measures your progress with a standardized scale like the Y-BOCS. If none of that is happening, you are not getting ERP, whatever the profile says.
The OCD Clinic is at 2 Bloor Street West, Suite 700, directly above the Bloor-Yonge subway station, so in-person sessions are reachable from anywhere on Line 1 or Line 2 in Toronto. In-person is useful when your triggers are the kind we can bring into a room: contamination, checking, ordering, or when you want a first session face to face before switching online.
For everything else, and for anyone outside the downtown core, sessions run over secure video. The research behind online ERP across Ontario found no significant difference between remote and face-to-face CBT for OCD (Salazar de Pablo et al., 2023), though people with more severe OCD may do better in person. For many exposures, your own kitchen, car, or front door is the better room anyway. Treatment is led by Justin La Rose, RP, an OCD therapist in Toronto who treats OCD and nothing else.
Related Resources
FAQ
ERP Questions
ERP stands for Exposure and Response Prevention. It's a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) developed for OCD. Exposure means facing the situations, thoughts or images that trigger your OCD anxiety, a step at a time. Response prevention means choosing not to do the compulsion afterward, so your brain gets the chance to learn something new.
CBT is a broad category. ERP is a specific protocol within CBT that was developed for OCD. General CBT often focuses on challenging and restructuring thoughts. ERP instead changes how you respond to intrusive thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. That difference matters. Therapy that keeps analysing the meaning of the thought, or reassuring you, can feed the cycle instead of breaking it.
No. Flooding is an older technique that starts with immediate, intense exposure to your worst fear. ERP is graded: we build a hierarchy of triggers from mildest to most intense and work through it at a pace you can manage. It's like the gym. You don't start with the heaviest weight, but it does need to feel a bit hard, or nothing changes. You set the pace with us, and nothing happens without your agreement.
Yes. 'Pure O' is a common term for OCD presentations where the compulsions are primarily mental: rumination, mental reviewing, self-reassurance, mental checking. ERP is adapted for these presentations by identifying the covert rituals and building exposures around the specific intrusive thoughts. The principle is the same: face the trigger and drop the compulsion, including the one that happens in your head.
This varies by severity. In my practice, people with moderate OCD usually finish the active part of ERP in about 12 to 16 weekly sessions; it can be shorter or longer. We reassess progress regularly and adjust the plan as needed.
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