Know your rights if you are under NHS England, Reb:
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=169814
You can choose the provider for the treatment, but not the treatment. So, if you have a couple of IAPT providers in your region, if you can get to any of them, you don't have to deal only with the most local one anymore.
Doctors are supposed to tell us this, but they don't. Like a lot of things the NHS say they should be telling us about our treatment options, which they either don't have time for, don't bother, don't want to add complication to a person struggling or just don't even know the policies themselves.
I think it was Hypo that mentioned writing things down before allowing the compulsion to take over? On one of those links I gave you, you will see something called a Thought Record. That's a CBT technique aimed at your challenging the thought to reframe a new conclusion about it. It can help. It can help just getting something on paper and spending time on it rather than thinking about it as thoughts tend to reach the conclusion and just start off at the beginning again with anxiety until you learn to deal with them.