OCD & ERP: Beyond the Manual

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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 to 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!

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Program Dates

Round 1

January 2026 Cohort

All sessions run Mondays, 11:00am–12:30pm ET

  • January 19
  • January 26
  • February 2
  • February 9
  • No training February 16
  • February 23
  • March 2
Round 2

March 2026 Cohort

All sessions run Mondays, 11:00am–12:30pm ET

  • March 23
  • March 30
  • No training April 6 – Easter Monday
  • April 13
  • April 20
  • April 27
  • May 4
Register for January
Register for March

    • 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

  • 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

    • 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

    • 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

    • 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

    • 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’

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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.

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A structured curriculum designed to build confidence, competence, and clinical fluency in OCD treatment.

Reserve Your Spot

Reserve your spot below to join a focused, high-impact training designed to deepen your OCD treatment skills and strengthen your clinical confidence.