Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Hecock. We're doing something today that most

podcasts regularly do, but we've never done.

We are re-releasing an episode from five years ago that I think many of you may not have heard.

We're re-releasing this episode called Adventures in Exposure Therapy for a few reasons.

First, since my OCD solo episode two months ago, I've been getting a lot of questions

about exposure therapy, and I think that this episode does a beautiful job at explaining

and exploring this therapy modality.

And second, Chris has been saying now for a long time that we should periodically highlight

some of the best work from the early seasons.

So, Chris, I'm listening. And finally, we've had a couple of

recent story projects fall apart in the late stages. So we're running pretty far behind at the moment,

and I wanted to make sure that we stick to our commitment to all of you to release something

good and meaningful every two weeks. A final note, Adventures in Exposure Therapy was actually the second in a two-part

series we did on OCD. The first episode was called OCD in the Time of Corona, also a must listen,

but you don't necessarily have to have heard that episode to enjoy today's conversation. In brief,

OCD in the time of Corona was the story of my patient

Aaron, who suffered from disabling OCD that focused on a catastrophizing fear of cold sores

and the herpes virus. I initially treated Aaron, and then I referred her to Dr. Amy Indermule,

a Colorado-based psychologist and OCD expert who then took over the exposure therapy

from me. Today's episode is a conversation with Dr. Amy, both about the fascinating specifics

of Aaron's OCD treatment, as well as a ton of wisdom and guidance about how to do exposure

therapy for various presentations of OCD. It was really fun for me to hear this episode after five years,

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