A Practical OCD Course 

Closed for enrolment while updating - enrolment open on 6 October

About Dr Elaine Ryan

Dr Elaine Ryan is a Chartered Psychologist. In these lessons, she explains OCD and ERP in plain English and walks through completed examples before inviting you to apply each skill to your own situation.

I am a Doctor of Psychology, a Chartered Psychologist, and have more than 20 years of experience specialising in OCD and anxiety.

I created this programme to give you access to the same evidence-based psychological tools I use in practice, in a format that is practical, clear, and easy to follow in your own time.

If the course is not the right fit for you, you are covered by a 10-day no-questions-asked refund.

When OCD keeps asking for one more answer

You may check a lock and then replay checking it. Wash and still feel the need for another wash. Ask for reassurance, search online, test your feelings, analyse a memory or avoid something that matters to you. The subject of the worry can differ, but the repeated demand for certainty can work in a familiar way.

This course helps you recognise that pattern, keep real-world safety rules in place, and practise reducing OCD’s extra response while returning to ordinary life. It does not ask you to prove that every feared outcome is impossible or to leap into the hardest situation on day one.

What you will learn

1. Understand the pattern. Map the trigger, doubt, distress, visible or mental ritual, brief effect and later cost.
2. Prepare a workable ERP step. Pick an ordinary activity you want back, set a flexible ladder and distinguish a real safety rule from OCD’s added rule.
3. Practise and adjust. Reduce a visible or silent ritual during and after the step, review what you did without using a feeling score as the verdict, and resize a step when needed.
4. Apply the skill across themes. Examples include checking, contamination, intrusive harm and taboo thoughts, relationship and identity doubt, religious or moral doubt, and the just-right feeling. You will map the method onto your own experience.
5. Keep going. Learn a short plan for setbacks and for asking for additional OCD-informed support if self-help is becoming unworkable.

Questions learners often have

Do I need to stop every ritual immediately? No. Choose a suitable, workable step. A gradual reduction of an OCD extra can be useful while you keep the ordinary real-world rule.

What if my OCD theme is not in an example? The core questions are the same: What doubt appeared? What extra response tried to settle it? What ordinary boundary applies? Which action matters to me now?

Does ERP mean ignoring safety? No. Follow genuine hygiene, medical, safeguarding, legal and consent requirements and respond to genuinely new practical information. The exercises target the repeated extra rule OCD adds to a familiar doubt.

What if a lesson is difficult? Rewatch, use the completed example and make the practice step smaller while keeping its direction. If symptoms are increasingly disrupting daily life or self-help remains unworkable, OCD-informed support can be useful. If you believe you may act on a harmful urge or face an immediate safety issue, stop that exercise and use urgent local help.

Start with one part of your life you want back. Learn the OCD loop, plan a workable ERP response and take the next ordinary step with an example and worksheet beside you.