How to Find a Therapist That’s Right for You | A Step-By-Step Guide
Transcript
Introduction
Hi, I’m Kenny Levine, I’m a therapist and coach who specializes in helping people struggling with conflict and miscommunication, teaching them the skills they need to reclaim their lives, and have their best relationships. I know that finding the right therapist for you can be daunting, but I’m here to give you some tips for finding the “perfect fit” therapist for you.
1) What are Your Goals for Therapy?
When you’re looking for a therapist, the first thing you should ask yourself is, what are you wanting to get out of therapy? What are the issues you’re hoping therapy can help you with? For some people that’s an easy question: maybe their relationship is in crisis, or they’re struggling with worry and anxiety. But other people just have a vague sense that something isn’t right, they’re struggling with emotions they don’t quite understand, and they might be having a hard time pinpointing exactly what they want to work on in therapy. If you have a sense that you need therapy, but you’re not quite sure how to tell a new therapist what you need, here’s my first tip: a question you might ask yourself is, “If I were to imagine seeing a therapist for awhile, and when we wrapped up therapy I was thinking, “Wow! That was super helpful, I’m so glad I went to therapy!”, If you were saying that, what would be different about you or your life?” Asking yourself that question can help you figure out what you want to work on in therapy. Once you know that, you can get to work on finding a therapist who works with those issues.
2) In-Person or Telehealth?
Next, you should also think about whether you want to meet with a therapist in-person, or if you’d like to meet online, via telehealth. A lot of people ask me if one is better than the other, and as with most things in therapy, the answer is, “it depends.” Therapy by telehealth has been shown to be effective in studies, but it hasn’t really been around long enough for us to have a lot of definitive studies. But one thing we do know that can be important for therapy by telehealth to be effective is if the client is choosing telehealth as their preferred delivery method. So think about your schedule, your location, your desire to spend time physically interacting with someone, vs your desire for convenience, and when it comes to in-person or online, go with whatever your gut says.
3) Identify Referrals
Once you understand your own therapy needs, the next step is for you to get some names of therapists who work with those issues, and have availability. Now, I know that a lot of people these days are turning to large companies, like Better Help. I have my thoughts about Better Help, but I’m going to save those for a future video. But let’s just say for the sake of argument that you’re going to pick a therapist who is either in solo private practice, or part of a group practice, or maybe is even part of a large hospital system, or medical facility.
4) Health Insurance vs. Out-of-Pocket
The next question you need to ask yourself is, do you need to use health insurance benefits to pay for your counseling, or are you able to pay out-of-pocket. Insurance benefits for therapy vary from one health insurance plan to another, so if you plan to use your health insurance, you need to call the customer service number on your card, or look online at your insurance company’s website, and find a therapist that works with your insurance company. A lot of health insurance companies have a search tool right on their website that allows you to search for an in-network mental health provider. Now while there are certainly some therapists in private practice who take health insurance, something you need to know is that taking insurance requires a lot of administrative work that many therapists in private practice don’t have time to do themselves, and don’t have a staff to do for them. Also, when you accept health insurance as a therapist, you have to agree to accept a lower reimbursement rate, just for the privilege of being a part of their network. So the upshot is that many therapists who can keep a busy private practice filled without participating with insurance companies, will make the choice to only accept self-pay clients. So the upshot is, if you want to use health insurance, your best bet might be to Google “group therapy practice near me,” or call your local hospital system, because chances are at one of those places there’s a therapist with openings, and who takes your insurance. But the downside of course is that you may have to work with whichever therapist the group practice or hospital system assigns you, rather than being able to select the therapist that YOU most want to see.
On the other hand, if you’re able to afford therapy out-of-pocket, you are likely to have a much wider selection of therapists in private practice to choose from. How can you go about finding them? There are lots of people you can ask to recommend a therapist, who can likely give you some names of good therapists. Ask yourself who you know whose judgement you trust, and who is plugged into the resources in your community. This could be your primary care provider, a professor, your clergyperson, or even a friend, though I recommend being very cautious about seeing the same therapist as anyone you’re super close to. If you have a best friend, sibling, or spouse who sees a therapist they like, you should ask that therapist if they can recommend another therapist, rather than seeing that same therapist yourself. Some therapists will do that, but in my opinion it’s a bad idea, it sends the wrong message about boundaries, and I don’t do it.
5) Using Directories
There are a lot of online directories you can use to find a therapist. By far the biggest one is Psychology Today, almost every therapist in the country has a profile on there. That directory can be great because there are so many therapists to choose from, but it can also be really overwhelming, and hard to narrow down. Also, although Psychology Today says they “verify” therapists, all they’re really doing is checking to see that you have an active license to practice therapy in your state. Some other directories, such as Best Therapists, do much more vetting, and keep a smaller, more curated list of therapist to choose from. Best Therapists requires clinicians to get letters of recommendation from other therapists, and they do some due diligence to check for red flags in the therapist’s background. There are a number of other directories as well, and I’ll link to all the most widely used therapist directories in the description below.
6) Couples Counseling
Finally, it’s important for you to know that most health insurance companies do not pay for couples counseling. The reason for this is that health insurance is set up to reimburse for treatment of one individual’s medical condition, and the need for treatment has to meet a standard called “medical necessity.” Couples counseling isn’t usually about treating one individual’s mental health condition. Usually, couples counseling is about treating the relationship that’s happening between the two partners, not one person’s mental health diagnosis, and most health insurance unfortunately just isn’t set up to pay for that.
7) Finding a Therapist You’re Compatible With
Now, let’s take a few minutes to talk about how you find a therapist who is really compatible with you, and exactly what that means, and what it doesn’t mean. I’m going to dive right into something that may spark a little discussion, and maybe some controversy. And let me say there are likely plenty of amazing therapists and people of good faith who might offer a very different perspective than what I’m about to say. And that’s ok, I hope everyone will leave questions and comments, and maybe we can get an engaging and respectful conversation going. But I’m speaking from a place of decades of experience, and I think this is an important message to put out there.
8) Identities
If you are, for example, LGBTQ, or BIPOC, or Jewish, or neurodivergent, or LatinX, or Christian, and you want to see a therapist who is also LGBTQ, or BIPOC, or Jewish, or neurodivergent, or LatinX, or Christian , that’s great. Thankfully, we have more and more representation in in the field of mental health, and if that is your priority in finding the therapist that’s right for you, there are some online directories that are specifically designed to help you find a therapist who shares your identity, and I’ll link to some of those in the description. That said, just because you are LGBTQ, or BIPOC, or Jewish, or neurodivergent, that doesn’t mean that the only therapist that can be right for you is one who is also LGBTQ, or BIPOC, or Jewish, or neurodivergent. The reality is, there can be potential upsides and potential downsides to seeing a therapist whose identity is very similar to yours, and who predominantly sees only clients with a similar identity.
First of all, just because someone is a therapist, that doesn’t mean they’ve resolved all their own issues. I’ve seen plenty of situations where a client was struggling with some aspect of their identity, and their therapist who shared that issue was either struggling, because the therapist was still wrestling with that same issue themself, OR maybe they’ve resolved that issue long ago, and the therapist might get a little unreasonably frustrated with their client because the client’s still stuck in dealing with an issue that the therapist thinks they should be able to move past. Obviously this isn’t necessarily the case, but it CAN be the case. On the flip side, it can also sometimes be profoundly healing to get validation and support from someone very different from us, someone who we might have thought was unable to really get our experience.
So to be clear, I’m not saying everyone should go out and try to find a therapist who is unlike them. You might be able to establish rapport more quickly with a therapist who is like you in some really central way, and obviously, there can be lots of benefits to seeing a therapist who has tons of experience working with issues directly related to your core identity. But therapists are trained to be good listeners, and just like we shouldn’t expect a South Asian physician to only see South Asian Patients, I think we should all hold space for the idea that a good therapist is a good therapist, and certainly not all, but most good therapists can be highly effective working with clients with a wide range of identities. Any therapist who can’t should be aware of their limitations, and should refer that client to someone else.
9) Which Therapeutic Approach?
Now that we’ve got the question of identities out of the way, let’s talk for a moment about different approaches to therapy. Most therapists were exposed to a wide range of treatment modalities early on in their education, but over time, as they progress in their careers, they pursue additional training in whatever kinds of therapies resonate with them most.
There are hundreds of different approaches to therapy, and I definitely can’t get into all of them now, but I do think it’s important to understand the difference between evidence-based therapies, and other approaches to therapy that are non-evidence based. That last category could include traditional or historical approaches to therapy, like psychoanalysis, alternative therapies, or emerging therapies. But in recent years there’s really been a trend towards more and more use of evidence-based therapies, and those are certainly the approaches that most insurance companies prefer.
Now when I say “evidence-based,” what I mean is that there have been scientific studies on the particular approach, and those studies have found that the approach is effective for treating a specific condition. For treating individual mental health disorders, some of the most common evidence-based approaches are cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and exposure therapy. For treating couples, the most widely used evidence-based approaches are the Gottman Method and Emotionally-Focused Therapy. Now that’s by no means a comprehensive list of evidence-based treatment approaches, but those are some approaches that are really common.
So the question that comes up when people are seeking therapy is, which approach is going to be best for me? So again, that answer as always is, “it depends.” There are definitely some approaches that are considered the “gold standard” treatment for a particular disorder. Exposure therapy for OCD for example, or dialectical behavioral therapy for borderline personality disorder. But there are exceptions to every rule, so if you’re interested you can Google some of these approaches and find out what they’re’ about, and see if one of them really speaks to you. But my advice to people looking for a therapist is usually not to worry so much about the treatment approach. Like I said, most therapists have been trained in many different approaches, and your therapist should be able to listen to you if you say that the approach they’re using is working for you. That’s a conversation the two of you should be able to have.
10) The Goodness of Fit
The main thing you should be thinking about is, “How do I feel interacting with this therapist?” Does this therapist seem to listen deeply? Does this therapist seem to really get what’s going on with me, and can they explain to me why we’re doing what we’re doing in a way that resonates with to me. Because, here’s the thing. Your therapist can pivot and change their approach, but they can’t change who they are. So, find the therapist that you actually WANT to spend time with, who you REALLY CONNECT with, and that’s the therapist that’s going to be right for you. Most of the time, therapy should feel good. It’s not a friendship, but your therapist should be someone that you look forward to spending time with, whose compassion and support you can feel.
11) Questions to Consider Asking
Finally, let’s talk about some questions you can ask a potential therapist at the outset to see if they’re right for you. Before you ever make contact, check out the therapists’ website, and see what they say about themselves and their work. If you like what you’re seeing, check if they offer a free consultation. Almost all therapists offer at least a free 15 phone consultation, because they also want to make sure that they’re a good fit for the client before scheduling an initial meeting.
Next, if you need to use health insurance, you should ask if they accept your insurance. Be ready to have the name of the exact plan you’re on with your insurance company. If you just say, “I have Blue Cross and Blue Shield,” the therapist won’t know if that’s Federal Blue cross, Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Option PPO, or whatever. So look at your insurance card before you talk to the therapist and find out the insurance plan name, not just the insurance company.
Finally, after you’ve told the therapist what kinds of problems you’re needing help with, ask the therapist to say a little bit about how they go about helping people like you. See if their answer shows that they seem to understand what sort of help you’re needing, and if the way they’re explaining their approach to the problem makes sense to you. If the therapists’ response doesn’t resonate with you, feels uncomfortable, or hard to understand, it’s definitely a good call to try contacting some other clinicians.
12) Do Your Research, Make a Choice
Finally… it’s totally ok to talk with up to three therapists for an initial consultation, but once you settle on a therapist, go ahead and stick with it for awhile to give it a chance, unless there’s some really good reason not to. It never makes sense to jump from therapist to therapist, or to have more than one individual or couples therapist at a time.
Ok, I hope those tips and suggestions are helpful to you in your journey into getting connected with the perfect fit therapist for you. This is a brand new channel, so be sure to subscribe, share, like and comment below! I’d love to hear about your journey, and how therapy has helped you transform your life and your relationships.
Links to Popular Therapist Directories (in no particular order)
Open Path Collective (for finding a sliding scale provider)
