ABSTRACT
Cognitive therapy developed for obsessions involves helping patients to identify and modify dysfunctional appraisals, emotional responses, and information processing in response to intrusions perceived as dangerous combined with behavioral experiments for emotionally meaningful disconfirmatory learning. Dysfunctional beliefs that perpetuate Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and require reappraisal include overestimation of threat, overimportance and overcontrol of thoughts, inflated responsibility, intolerance of uncertainty, and perfectionism. The chapter illustrates the complete response prevention at each step of Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) which can be administered gradually. Cognitive therapy strategies such as reappraisal of intrusive thoughts, emotions, and feared situations are recommended and practiced to enhance learning and adaptive responses to distress during behavioral interventions. Behavioral experiments involve predictions of how the person will feel, behave, and the outcome compared with what actually occurs. The aim of these exposures is repeated disconfirmation and gradual modification of unrealistic expectations, beliefs, and emotional and behavioral responses.
