How to Pick a Great Therapist
It is HARD to find a therapist who is a great fit. Here is a guide to finding one more easily and quickly!
At least once a week I go through the process of helping people find good options for therapists. It is very difficult to navigate the world of counseling when you are not familiar with it. And often you really need someone who is specialized in a certain way to really make progress. For example, I don’t work with couples, so when couples contact me, I refer out to other therapists who specialize in working with couples. So I decided for this week’s blog I would write a guide for finding a good therapist. Here is a step-by-step guide:
Decide if you want to use your insurance or not. If you have insurance, you can either go with a therapist that is mostly covered by your insurance (in-network) or you can use your “out of network benefits.” This decision will most likely be made based on what you can afford. Most often therapists that do not participate in insurance plans are sought after enough that they do not need to participate in insurance plans to get business or they prefer not to interface with insurance plans. Additionally, therapists who do not participate in insurance plans usually have a certain number of clients that they will see for a reduced or adjusted fee (sliding scale) based on your income level. Often the experience and expertise of the therapist is reflected in their rates per session.
IN-NETWORK - If you use an in-network therapist, the sessions will be covered aside from a copay. You can call your insurance company to find out what your copay for outpatient therapy is.
OUT-OF-NETWORK - Call your insurance company to find out what percentage of your fee they cover and what deductible you may have to meet before you receive reimbursement for sessions. Some insurance plans do not have out-of-network benefits. You will most likely file your own claims to your insurance company with receipts from the therapist. Then your insurance company will reimburse a portion of your fees.
PAYING OUT OF POCKET - Sometimes you will want to choose a therapist based on their expertise and will be willing and able financially to pay for the services even if you don’t have out-of-network benefits. Coaches’ services for example are not reimbursed by insurance.
SLIDING SCALE - Many therapists have several slots for clients who cannot afford their full rate and will adjust your rate to match your income
Specializations: Now that you have an idea of whether you will use insurance or not, start considering what types of specializations you need or want in a therapist. You may want to research some of these different specializations before looking up therapists. Here are some aspects to consider:
gender - would you like to work with a man, women, or LGBTQ clinician
focus on age - do you want a therapist that works exclusively with your age group
diagnosis - you may have seen a psychiatrist and know you have a specific diagnosis that you would like to work on. do you want a therapist who specializes in that particular issue
modality or training - would you like to work with a therapist that has a specific training or uses a specific technique. there are a range of techniques available to work in. Here are a few of my favorites, feel free to contact me for further recommendations about techniques:
EMDR - for trauma and very stuck patterns you can’t seem to stop
Art Therapy and Dance Therapy - especially helpful for children, trauma, geriatrics, and those who tend to be intellectuals and struggle to connect with more creative and intuitive living
Somatic Therapies - Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Hakomi, and Somatic Experiencing are all focused on integrating the experience of the body and mind to heal trauma and break through limitations and negative belief structures
DBT - great for suicidal ideation, self-injury, and emotional explosiveness
Gottman - for couple’s work
spirituality - would you like a therapist with a similar spiritual or religious background or approach
Zip code - In terms of actually looking a therapists up, here is how you do it:
go to www.psychologytoday.com and find the link for “Find a therapist”
put your zip code in and how far you are willing to travel from your zip code, you can always expand your search
put in the different details you are looking for in a therapist (as described above) and remember to put your insurance company in the search if you want to try to find a therapist that takes your insurance plan
Some advice from a therapist in your search:
Word of mouth versus looking up a therapist - It can be helpful to talk with friends and family about therapists they know as opposed to just starting from scratch.
Trauma-informed and attachment-based - I highly recommend you look for these buzz words in therapists’ descriptions of themselves and their work. These two terms imply that the therapist has had more recent and advanced training and is not still working from Freudian techniques
Don’t be afraid to shop around. It is a service, don’t be afraid to try a few therapists before deciding on one. And if you start working with someone and don’t think it is a good fit, tell them and switch to a new therapist.
See a therapist that specializes in the concerns you want to work on. Don’t waste your money on a therapist that works with everyone and everything or it may take years longer to work through the issue you want to work through.
Find a therapist that works in a strength-based approach and spends time on celebrating victories as much as they focus on processing issues.
Ask for a free consultation before paying for a session to see if it is a good fit.
Your therapist will prob recommend working together once a week to start. I recommend this as well. It is important to build a relationship.
Signs you are working with a great therapist:
They collaborate with you and don’t believe they know your life better than you know your own.
If you feel the therapist is shaming you or is overly biased towards your opinion consider moving on.
You should feel like your therapist gets you within the first 3 sessions. And that when he/she doesn’t get you, you can bring it up. Your therapist will never be perfect and you will need to be honest when they are off track.
You feel both nurtured and challenged.
You feel SAFE! If you feel uneasy and don’t feel comfortable bringing it up with your therapist, you may want to see if you feel the same with another therapist. This may be more about something you are dealing with or it may be about something you are feeling from the therapist.
Your therapist focuses on obstacles to your growth rather than diagnoses.
You feel inspired to come back even if it feels like hard work. You feel hopeful.
You feel your therapist is present with you.
You don't feel like you may be wasting your money.
Should you have more questions or want more advice about this process, you can contact us. If you are interested in learning more and would like a free 20 minute consultation, contact us at info@bravecounseling.com. We work virtually with clients throughout the Denver and Boulder area and all throughout CO.
Welcome to Brave Embodiment Counseling
A little about our humble beginnings as a practice and walking our talk!
My name is Kimberly Massale and I am honored to share my deepest thoughts, opinions, and work with you. My vision for this blog is to provide information on healing and life from a psychotherapist’s perspective. I hope to share much of my own journey along with the knowledge I have learned in training to become an therapist. My highest intention is to show up energetically as generously as possible, to provide the public with the insight of a psychotherapist that has done her own work and continues to evolve daily. My hope is that you may benefit from the information I share.
I will tell you a little bit about what brought me here. I recently moved to the Denver, Colorado from the Washington, DC area. While we love the challenging intellect of the DC area, my partner and I needed a change of lifestyle after both living in the there for much of our adult lives. I grew up and lived in the area my entire life in fact. Though neither of us had jobs, we both knew we needed to heed the universe’s signs and take the risk to move. We drove cross country touring for about a 15 days and finally landed in Denver.
I have felt the shift of energy in my body after finally landing in Denver. I know I made the right decision to nourish my soul. The snowfall and mountains are confirmation. Much of my younger adult years, I felt an internal conflict between being me and being what others wanted me to be. I am after all a therapist for a reason, I can chameleon to adapt to what people expect of me. Though conforming is energy sucking and overtime, I realized the need to stand fully in my being and let my true essence be seen. So I followed my heart, switching from an engineering major to art, trusting my path would unfold if I followed my passion and gut. And then I found Art Therapy as an option for graduate school. That is when my life truly began to feel mine, like I a found my calling and I could really start to engage with life. I started to soar.
Meanwhile, I broached difficult topics as a client in many types of psychotherapy approaches. I worked hard to work through social anxiety, phobias, fears, and self-esteem issues. While I gained from these talk therapy approaches, I never really got traction. At times as a young adult, these issues were debilitating. I could not understand why I struggled so much, I had a very kind loving family that was always supportive. I had no trauma. There was literally no reason for me to have these issues. But I kept at it, continuing to walk my talk. If I was going to be a therapist, I had to do my own work to heal, no matter how long or difficult the process.
I met soul sisters in the Art Therapy world. One professor became a mentor. Post graduation, she suggested I work with Amy Tatsumi, a classmate of hers, for my post graduate supervision hours. My relationship with Amy would change my life. She gave me the permission to learn how to take space and heal. She put me in touch with her colleague to do long distance video coaching. This was the moment my life changed dramatically. I was going through a divorce at age 27 after an 8 year long relationship and had become very depressed. The coach was trained in a somatic approach (much like Sensorimotor Psychotherapy which I have since trained in) and “The Daring Way” which is the work of Brene Brown focused on shame resiliency. I started healing and changing.
I began learning that these traditional diagnoses given by psychiatrists, that still rule our psychology world, do not account for developmental trauma or even trauma properly. The relationships are not a part of the diagnostic process either. That these components of psychology are perhaps more important than the cubby holes of diagnostics we use. People are constantly misdiagnosed as having ADHD, Bipolar, Borderline, Depression, and Anxiety and their real issues are based on their early childhood experiences and relational patterns as adults. I learned that healing comes from exploring your interrelational patterns, somatic patterns, energetics, and faith.
And HEALING IS EXPERIENTIAL! You can’t heal without a reparative experience. You can talk till you are blue in the face about what you struggle with, what you want to change, and how you can’t change AND guess what, you won’t change by just talking about it. You have to experience something different. When I began to experience new ways of showing up in the world, that’s when my life changed for the better. I released depression, I released anxiety, and I could be fully seen as the true me.
This was over 10 years ago now. And since I have continued to learn and grow spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I am living the life I want to live now and know how to reach goals I have for myself. My energy aligns with my core essence. And I share healing with those I work with now.