A new treatment center for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and anxiety has opened in Federal Way and is already drawing patients from around the region.

The OCD and Anxiety Treatment Center held an open house and ribbon cutting on March 20 to share their work and the services they offer at 33650 6th Ave. S. in Federal Way.

Their program involves a 12-week intensive outpatient sequence with a cohort that includes group activities, clinical evaluations and practical exercises. It runs three hours a day for five days a week during the program.

The modality they use focuses on exposure and response prevention, which looks like practice with exposure to triggers in order to work through the anxiety or compulsions they bring up.

Current patient Matthew Gorman spoke about his experience at the event — and makes the commute from Eugene, Oregon, to Federal Way to access services. That five hour drive, once a week, is tiring but worth it, he said.

At 20 years old, he has already tried many different treatments to help with his OCD, including a residential program in Wisconsin. These other programs were “not even a fraction as helpful” as the OCD Anxiety Center treatment he is receiving now, he said.

He will be graduating from the Federal Way program soon and said that while it is still a struggle, “they gave me the tools to actually orient myself toward a life I want to live.”

Although OCD is often depicted as simply a strong preference for cleanliness or orderliness, Gorman said people don’t understand the “gigantic toll” it can take for those affected by it.

“The amount of energy you’re giving thoughts, it can completely take control of your life,” Gorman said. “When it comes to something as uniquely sinister as the OCD thought process, it can definitely be hard to convey, unless you’ve personally experienced it.”

OCD Anxiety Centers boasts a 79% recovery rate, based on an effectiveness study conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill using archival data from over 1,000 OCD Anxiety Center clients, according to materials provided at the open house.

Exposure exercises

To help guests understand how treatment works, leaders of the organization gave guests the chance to experience an exposure. One by one, guests picked a number and then were told what type of mental health issue they were going to face an exposure on.

For social anxiety, one woman had to sing “Happy Birthday” to the room. For a contamination phobia, another had to play trash basketball with crumpled papers, then fish them out of the trash, pick another object from the trash can to pull out as well and rub that against her face.

For a panic disorder, another had to breathe through a coffee straw, inducing the feeling of hyperventilating. For a dysphoria, another had to look in a mirror and describe their face without looking away.

For participants in the program, these exposure exercises would be related to their particular challenges, founder and CEO Paul Peterson explained to the group. The point of all of these exercises is to purposefully induce the state of overwhelming anxiety or fear in a safe and controlled environment long enough to ride out the uncomfortable feelings.

The International OCD Foundation describes exposure and response prevention this way: “The exposure component of ERP refers to practicing confronting the thoughts, images, objects, and situations that make you anxious and/or provoke your obsessions. The response prevention part of ERP refers to making a choice not to do a compulsive behavior once the anxiety or obsessions have been ‘triggered.’ All of this is done under the guidance of a therapist at the beginning — though you will eventually learn to do your own ERP exercises to help manage your symptoms. Over time, the treatment will ‘retrain your brain’ to no longer see the object of the obsession as a threat.”

During the 12 weeks, participants start small. By the end of the program, they are working together to lead each other in exposure exercises and creating their own exercises to continue to work on their tolerance in the future.

The OCD and Anxiety Center began with a single location in Utah and since has spread to five states. The organization reports their goal is to have 80 locations by 2029.

Federal Way was chosen through the program’s needs assessment process to determine if there was a need for their services here.

Present at the open house were a variety of local service providers. Dr. Rindee Ashcraft is an OCD Therapist at Polaris and attended the open house. When asked about the need for treatment like the OCD and Anxiety Treatment Center provides, she said that although there are some great options around, waitlists can be long, and overall, “Washington state is underserved for those higher levels of care.”

Ashcraft said that as a therapist, “It’s so hard to watch clients who are sick…we want them to get better…we know they can,” but then they are “back to square one,” sometimes when they have to be put on a waitlist before they can access care. Ashcraft said that the OCD and Anxiety Center is a welcome addition to local services.

At an open house event at their new location in Federal Way, founder and CEO of OCD Anxiety Centers Paul Peterson explains how their treatment works to members of the local community.

The Federal Way Chamber of Commerce joined staff and community members connected to the OCD Anxiety Center that opened in Federal Way to celebrate them with a ribbon cutting on Thursday, March 20. Photos by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror.