Disclaimer: All of my blog posts, including this one, are based on my own personal experience. I am not a medical doctor, psychologist, or therapist; if you are concerned about your mental health, speak with a health professional. My content is meant as a self-help resource to be used in conjunction with professional treatment.
This reframing shifts the thinking-feeling-behaving cycle from one akin to going into battle to just living your normal life—you go into the exposure (experience) with less dread and a lesser expectation of difficulty. It shifts the focus from response prevention (what you don’t want, avoiding) to desired response (what you DO want, allowing).
I know that this is harder to implement in the case of someone with very strong OCD fears (I’ve been there myself). If this is the case, one may start by experiencing the OCD trigger which causes the least distress and approaching it with a behavior more closely aligned to the one desired (for example, replacing checking the faucet 10 times with checking it twice). ERP is based on behavioral reconfiguration that then extends to change one’s thinking and feeling (the trigger is now perceived as a neutral or unpreferred experience).
EDB is based on who one is being, addressing one’s behaving-feeling-thinking or thinking-feeling-behaving, depending on one’s individual case (though there is overlap between thinking, feeling, and behaving). But, compared to ERP, EDB’s focus is what one wants (desired being) instead of what one does not want (response prevention). Furthermore, EDB takes the triggering situation as an experience. Compared to ERP’s framing of the triggering situation as exposure, EDB’s experience label lessens the friction when entering and during situations.
The downfall I had with structured ERP was that I was focusing more on exposure instead of on living my “normal” (desired) life. This is why adopting this mindset shift (EDB instead of ERP) can be beneficial. ERP (EDB) was no longer something I had to go out of my way to do (“without” [outside of] my path), but a way of living that applied to any scenario where fear was trying to hold me back from how I want to be living my life (“within” [inside of] my path).
I always encourage my coaching/mentorship clients to place their focus on what they DO want instead of what they DON’T want. This mindset alone has greatly transformed my own life, which is why I share it with others: you’re living from allowing instead of living from avoiding.
To learn how to begin implementing EDB, read this specific blog post I wrote. And, if you desire personalized coaching/mentorship support for cognitive, affective, and behavioral reconfiguration, reach out to me via email or Instagram DMs :)
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