OCD & ERP: Beyond the Manual
Fully Virtual
9 CE Credits
Small Cohort
A six-week, live supervision-style training for clinicians
A six-week, practical training designed to strengthen clinician confidence, clarity, and efficacy when treating OCD.
Participants learn through a blend of teaching, supervision-style guidance, experiential practice exercises, and case demonstrations—led by Elisha Schafer, clinical director of Lotus Counselling and adjunct professor with McMaster University’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences.
This program is designed for clinicians who want competency in providing treatment to individuals living with OCD. This training will prepare you to effectively deliver evidenced based Exposure and Response Prevention treatment beyond simply following the manual!
March 2026 Cohort
All sessions run Tuesdays, 9:30am–11:00am ET
- March 24
- March 31
- April 7
- April 14
- April 21
- April 28
April 2026 Cohort
All sessions run Wednesdays, 12:00pm–1:30pm ET
- April 29
- May 6
- May 13
- May 20
- May 27
- June 3
A structured curriculum designed to build confidence, competence, and clinical fluency in OCD treatment.
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Learn how OCD symptoms manifest generally and across different clients themes
Identify theme-based presentations and be able to articulate your understanding of symptoms to clients in session
Build credibility and rapport with clients who often feel misunderstood
Understand the lived experience and nuances behind intrusive thoughts and compulsions
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Clinical Dialogue: How to Talk About OCD
Ask targeted questions that uncover hidden compulsions and core fears
Normalize and validate OCD challenges and provide client’s with a deeper understanding of their symptoms
Frame ERP to client’s to help them understand how and why exposures help, increasing treatment adherence
Practice important clinical conversations with prompts and feedback to support confidence for clinical application
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Design and optimize exposures to promote positive behavioural changes
Apply principles of inhibitory learning to increase efficacy of exposures
Understanding the clinical differentiation between habituation and inhibitory learning approach to ERP
Leveraging knowledge to design effective and creative exposures collaboratively with clients
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Identify subtle and often-overlooked ruminative patterns driving client’s anxiety and symptomatology
Teach client’s how to disengage from rumination by differentiating between attention and awareness
Help client’s understand coherency across OCD symptoms by identifying their core feared emotion
Learn to support client’s in developing self-empowerment and choice over attention and behaviours
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Conceptualize OCD as a defence mechanism to provide a deeper understanding of symptoms
Help clients identify ‘emotional conflicts’ leading to compulsive patterns
Address the emotional, psychodynamic, and relational elements of OCD
Integrate learning to help promote agency, flexibility, and choice for clients
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Navigating challenging themes and understanding how to manage and mitigate related risk issues
Learning how to apply ERP and other treatment theories to more challenging OCD subtypes (somatic, ‘just-right’)
Understanding how to approach and treat OCD by using the right clinical ‘attitude’
How the Training Works: A practical, supervision-style training model designed to build real-world confidence session by session.
This is a six-week program that runs for 1.5 hours per week, taught live and fully virtual. Each session includes case demonstrations, scripts, resources and worksheets. Participants will engage in experiential practice and supervision-style coaching to promote confidence through experience and be able to apply learning clinically. The full program costs $300 CAD and provides 9 CE credits upon completion. The cohort is intentionally kept to a maximum of 10 to maximize opportunities for practice, individualized feedback, and meaningful clinical growth.
Who This Training Is For: A training built for clinicians committed to strengthening their confidence and skills in OCD treatment.
This training is designed for psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists, counsellors, and graduate trainees who want to build confidence and competency in treating OCD. It’s suitable for clinicians working in private practice, community agencies, hospitals, or school-based settings. No prior OCD-specific training is required, however a basic understanding of OCD and CBT is beneficial.
Reserve Your Spot Now
A six-week live training that builds real clinical confidence in treating OCD. You'll work through case demonstrations, supervision-style coaching, and experiential practice — so you can apply what you learn the same week you learn it.
Each session runs 1.5 hours, fully virtual, in a cohort capped at 10 clinicians. The small group format means individualized feedback and genuine practice time — not a passive webinar.
The curriculum moves through six areas: understanding OCD beyond the diagnostic criteria, precision in clinical dialogue, targeting change mechanisms in ERP, rumination-focused ERP, incorporating psychodynamics into ERP, and complex and nuanced OCD presentations.
Led by Elisha Schafer, Clinical Director of Lotus Counselling and adjunct professor in McMaster University's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences.
Cohort 3 runs Wednesdays, 12:00–1:30PM ET, beginning April 29. Sessions run April 29, May 6, May 13, May 20, May 27, and June 3, 2026.
9 CE credits included on completion. No prior OCD-specific training required — a basic understanding of OCD and CBT is helpful.
Keep Developing Your Practice
Small group consultation sessions for Beyond the Manual alumni only. Bring a current OCD case, present to the group, and work through the clinical details in real time. Each session is capped at three participants — not a lecture, not a Q&A, a working session.
Available in two formats. The Ad Hoc Session is a single one-hour consultation — choose any one available date. The 3-Session Bundle is three consecutive one-hour sessions — choose either the Tuesday or Wednesday track when you register.
All times are in EST.