Spenser Gabin: Reflections on ERP therapy, and becoming a therapist (#517)
The OCD Stories
Stuart
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In episode 517 I chat with Spenser Gabin. Spenser is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist based in Encinitas, California
We discuss his OCD, becoming a therapist, his thoughts on Ian O'Brien's episode and clinical perceptive on Ian's research findings on exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP): drop out rate, explaining how ERP links to life, setting expectations, ERP as a lifestyle, and motivation in ERP. We also discuss building trust in therapy, therapist disclosure, self-efficacy, and much more. Hope it helps.
Show notes: https://theocdstories.com/episode/spenser-517
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The OCD Stories podcast, hosted by me, Stuart Ralph. |
| 0:05.5 | The OCD Stories is a podcast dedicated to raising awareness and understanding around obsessive, |
| 0:11.1 | compulsive symptoms. I do this for interviewing inspired therapists, psychologists, and people |
| 0:16.8 | who have experienced OCD. Welcome to the OCD Stories. |
| 0:25.3 | And welcome to episode 517 of the podcast. |
| 0:32.8 | And then this one, I got back on Spencer Gavin. Spencer is now a therapist, specifically working with OCD. He, when he came on many, many years ago, he hadn't quite trained as a therapist at that point and he was sharing his story. |
| 0:41.0 | I met him at the 2017 ISDF conference in San Francisco. |
| 0:47.9 | So it's great to hear his story back then. |
| 0:50.0 | So it's great to have him back on now as a therapist. |
| 0:52.8 | And in this one, we discuss his OCD. |
| 0:55.8 | He briefly recaps his OCD, talks about becoming a therapist. |
| 1:00.1 | His thoughts on Ian O'Brien's episode, which was on the podcast not too long ago, |
| 1:04.5 | where Ian, as part of his master's research, took 100 stories from or a hundred more stories from the episode, |
| 1:13.4 | transcribed them and interpreted them, analyzed them, did an analysis to find themes |
| 1:20.6 | looking at, you know, what gets in the way of people doing ERP. So Spencer wanted to reflect |
| 1:26.4 | on that episode. He was a fan of the episode and he just |
| 1:29.0 | wanted to give a clinical perspective to some of Ian's points in his research. In particular, we look |
| 1:36.0 | at dropout rate in ERP, explaining how ERP links to life, setting expectations, ERP is a lifestyle |
| 1:42.8 | and motivation in ERP. |
| 1:44.9 | We also discuss building trust in therapy, therapist disclosure, self-efficacy and much more. |
| 1:51.4 | So thanks again to Ian for his episode. |
| 1:53.6 | It's the episode that keeps on giving. |
... |
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