Exposure and Response Prevention
Exposure Therapy for Women in Colorado
The list of things you don’t do has been getting longer, and each one seemed reasonable at the time. Exposure therapy works on that list, in an order you set with your therapist, one step at a time.
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Schedule a Therapist Match CallClinically reviewed by Amy Lowe, MSW, LCSW, LAC, Director of Clinical Teams • Last reviewed September 5, 2026
The Method
What is Exposure Therapy?
Exposure therapy is a structured way of working on fear and avoidance. With a therapist, you approach the thing you have been steering around, in planned steps. You stay with it long enough for your nervous system to catch up to the present, where the fear is not actual. A fear stays strong because you keep avoiding it, so this works directly on the avoiding.
Colorado Women’s Center is designed for women, so you won’t spend your first session explaining context that should already be understood. Exposure therapy for women is one of the approaches you’ll find among our therapy methods. It sits inside cognitive behavioral therapy instead of standing apart from it. Clinical guidelines name it the first-line treatment for specific phobias and for OCD, where it is usually called exposure and response prevention.
Steps you agree to in advance, at a pace you set.
Our Promise to You
We Guarantee Our Therapist Matching
This work asks you to do the thing you’ve been avoiding, which means trusting whoever is setting the pace. That isn’t trust you can talk yourself into with the wrong therapist. If the first match isn’t right, tell us and we’ll match you with another at no additional cost.
Request a Free ConsultationWhat This Works On
What Exposure Therapy Helps With
Exposure therapy for women is used wherever avoidance is holding something in place. None of it has to reach a crisis before it’s worth bringing in. These are what come up most at Colorado Women’s Center.
Persistent Avoidance
There are routes you don’t take, invitations you turn down, and conversations you keep postponing. Each decision looks small on its own. Together they decide how much of your life you have access to.
Anxiety and Panic
When the body reacts first and the reasoning arrives afterward, argument doesn’t help much. Anxiety therapy for women using exposure works on what the nervous system learns from experience instead.
Specific Phobias
A fear of flying, driving, heights, needles, or dogs is contained in one subject, which suits it well to graded steps. The target is clear and the steps are easy to build.
OCD and Compulsive Rituals
Checking, washing, and mental rituals lower anxiety briefly and strengthen it over time. OCD therapy for women uses exposure and response prevention. That is the version of this work built for compulsions.
Trauma and Intrusive Memories
Reminders arrive without warning and the day reorganizes around not meeting any more of them. Trauma and PTSD therapy can use exposure, with stabilizing work in place first.
Social Anxiety
You stay quiet in meetings, cancel plans the morning of, and run the replay afterward. The steps here are usually social ones, built to test what you expect other people to think.
Hypervigilance
You scan a room before you sit down, track the exits, and never come quite off duty. Exposure works on the situations that keep the scanning switched on, not on the scanning itself.
The Physical Side of Dread
You get nausea before a drive, a headache the night before a meeting, a stomach that knows the calendar before you do. Those symptoms tend to ease as the anticipation they’re attached to does.
Shutting Down Around Triggers
Going blank or flat when something comes up is avoidance too, just quieter. Sessions work on staying present in smaller doses first, which is where the pacing matters most.
Our Approach
How Exposure Therapy Runs at Colorado Women’s Center
The work follows the same shape whatever is on your list, and it starts well below the hardest item on it. Here is the order it goes in.
Start With a Match Call
You begin with a Wellness Coordinator. She asks what you’re looking for, including whether you want exposure work specifically. Then she matches you on that, on which office suits you, and on therapist specialty and experience.
Map What You Are Avoiding
Before any of it starts, you and your therapist list what you steer around and roughly how hard each one feels. Some will be obvious. Some you won’t have noticed you were doing. That list becomes the order the work follows.
Start Low and Stay With It
You stay with a step long enough for the alarm to settle, instead of leaving the moment it spikes. Your therapist is there throughout. You can stop, and stopping gets talked about instead of treated as a failure.
Five Offices or Online
You can do this work in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Broomfield, or Longmont, or over secure video from anywhere in Colorado. Some steps happen in session and some happen in your own week, planned in advance either way. Sessions run seven days a week, 8am to 8pm.
Methods We Offer
- Exposure Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- EMDR
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Somatic Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Mindfulness-Based Approaches
- Family Systems Therapy
Common Questions
Exposure Therapy Questions Women Ask Us
What actually happens in an exposure session?
You and your therapist agree in advance what the step is going to be. Then you do it with her there, and she tracks what happens in your body while it is happening. Afterward the two of you compare what you expected with what occurred. You know what a session will involve before it starts.
Will this make my anxiety worse?
Some discomfort during a step is expected, and it is part of how the approach works. That is not the same as making you worse. Your therapist sets the level with you, and when a step turns out to be too big, the answer is a smaller step instead of pushing through.
Is exposure therapy safe if I have been through trauma?
It can be, and the sequencing matters a great deal. A therapist will usually want stabilizing skills in place before trauma-focused exposure begins, and she will say so if she thinks something else should come first. That judgment belongs between you and your therapist, and it is worth raising on the Match Call.
Is this just making myself face my fears?
No, and doing it that way on your own often backfires. It is common to leave the moment the anxiety peaks, which teaches the nervous system that leaving is what worked and leaves the fear stronger than before. The structure and the pacing are what change the outcome, and that is what your therapist brings.
Does exposure therapy work online?
For much of it, yes. Colorado Women’s Center runs sessions over secure video anywhere in the state, and steps that happen out in your own life work the same either way. Some fears are better approached in person, and your therapist will tell you when that applies to yours. Our online therapy page has the details.
How long does exposure therapy take?
That’s decided between you and your therapist rather than set in advance. It depends on what is on your list, how much of it is connected, and what you want to get back. Your therapist builds a plan with you early on and revisits it with you as the work goes.
How soon can I start?
Match Calls are usually available within 48 hours, often within 24. Most clients are with a therapist within about a week, depending on their own availability. Colorado Women’s Center offices are open seven days a week, 8am to 8pm, and online sessions run the same hours. Call 720.810.2355 or use the form on this page.
Related Methods
Approaches That Sit Close to Exposure Therapy
This work usually arrives as part of something larger. These two are what it most often sits inside or alongside.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Exposure is one of the tools inside CBT, and the work on thinking usually runs alongside the steps.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) →
EMDR Therapy
Another way of working on memories that never settled, using bilateral stimulation in place of graded steps.
EMDR therapy →
