I Spent $30k On Trauma Therapy (so you don’t have to)
In this video Brad Schipke recounts his personal journey through five distinct phases of trauma treatment, detailing the modalities, session frequencies, costs, and outcomes of each. He begins with generalist talk therapists who lack trauma‑specific training, moves to trauma‑specialists using IFS, EMDR, CBT, and somatic approaches, then increases session frequency, followed by a costly three‑day intensive with multiple therapists, and finally arrives at an independent, self‑directed healing system. Throughout he highlights five systemic problems he observed in conventional therapy: therapist dependency, inefficiency, high expense, lack of urgency, and absence of clear goals or tracking. He argues that more processing time directly correlates with faster healing, a pattern he confirms across over 2,000 coached clients. To overcome the learning curve of self‑healing, he offers a free daily email series, a podcast, and a paid “Broken to Unbreakable” program. The video blends personal narrative, practical advice, cost analysis, and promotional calls to action, aiming to empower viewers to heal without spending tens of thousands of dollars.
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I spent over $30,000 on trauma therapy. I'm going to teach you the lessons that I learned, and I'm going to show you an easier, faster, and free way to actually go and heal. So I'm gonna go through these 5 evolutions that I personally went through. Let's zoom in here on the first one, which is a generalist. When I'm talking about a generalist, I'm talking about somebody who does not have any specific trauma therapy training. They are not trauma-informed. This is basically just like a traditional talk therapist that you would Get anywhere on Psychology Today, and since when I started my recovery journey, I had no idea what PTSD was. This is where I personally started because I had no idea what to do, and my partner at the time also had CPTSD. We had no idea even what PTSD was, so we started here just right at the bottom. The cadence of our meetings were once per week, and the time that we actually spent processing during that one session per week was zero because it was just talk therapy. We weren't actually addressing the root of the problem. We were Merely just talking around, it felt like in circles for a very long time, but never actually getting around to solving the problem that was underneath everything. Now, the financial cost here was $90 per session, which equated to about $360 per month. And now this is just what I personally paid. And the problem with using generalist therapists here was that they were unqualified for trauma, even if they said they were. So actually sometimes A generalist talk therapist, they will say, "Oh, I'm qualified to do this," or "I help people with these problems." I found that, and I went to probably three or four different generalist therapists before moving on to this next stage. But I found that even the ones that said that they knew how to deal with trauma did not know how to deal with it. And this has been consistent with the clients that I've worked with over the years as well. Now, the solution that I came up with after this stage was to find a trauma specialist. So actually finding somebody and interviewing somebody and asking the right questions to ensure. That the next person I worked with actually knew what they were talking about. So this is when I moved on to the second stage here, which was going to a specialist—not a talk therapist, not just some throw spaghetti at the ceiling and see what works therapist—but somebody who knows what they're doing with trauma, who's trained in a trauma-informed modality. So the modalities here that I personally went through were IFS . EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and somatic therapy. So these are all the various therapies that I tested out on myself. And this is actually a machine that the EMDR therapist used to help do their EMDR. And it's actually something that I personally purchased myself that I would later use to do my own processing sessions. Now, The variable variables over here, the cadence that I started with was once per week. The amount of time that I spent processing during the sessions were about 20 to 30 minutes per session, and again per week. And the 20 to 30, what that comes from, even though the sessions were 50 minutes long, what I observed is that there was a lot of chitchat in the beginning. There was chitchat at the end, even though I tried to optimize things and be like, let's just let's just get started here. Let's dive in. Let's do the processing. I'm here for a reason. I want to heal. I still found that I only got around 20 to 30 minutes of actual processing because you have the chitchat on either end. And at the end of every processing session, you have to close it out by doing a few relaxation exercises. So that's about as efficient as I got there. Now, the cost here for me, I was spending around $120 per session. Now, again, I did test out a few different therapists as well. And that about equated to $480 per month. Now, the problem with this level was that there was only one session per week. And it was going way too slow, right? 20 to 30 minutes per week really was only enough to open up the problem, but not really truly process the problem. So my next solution for that was just to do more sessions. I figured, okay, if, if this is the right path and this is the right modality, surely more sessions will equate to more healing. So that's when I went on to this 3rd stage here, which was what I call Specialist 3X. And this is when I was doing 2 or 3 sessions per week with the same specialist that was up here. Now the cadence again just bumped up to 2 to 3 times per week and the time spent processing jumped up to 40 minutes to 1.5 hours per week. And the financial cost was again $120 per session, but then that ballooned up to $960 to $1,440 per month for me. So this is when I started to feel the strain, but I, at the time I felt like I had no other option. There was nobody really teaching the tools. And I felt like the only thing that I could do was spend this money and I was willing to do whatever it took. And that included spending money. So I put my money where my mouth was and I just said, hey, let's do more. Now, the problem with this stage was that I did feel more progress. So it did help, right? So I did start to feel the effects of the processing. I could feel some incremental improvements from me, but it was still not fast enough for me. Like I was still felt weak to weak. Yes, I could feel some improvement. But it wasn't that much. It really was not moving the needle. So my solution, the thing that I came up with to solve that problem, was to hire a private therapist and do a full-on weekend intensive. So that was the 4th kind of evolution here, was doing a private intensive with 3 different therapists. And I actually did this with my partner and it was up in New Hampshire and we sourced and hired individual independent therapist to do this work. And the cadence for this was one time. So this is just a one-time deal. The time spent processing was about 21 hours in 3 days. So over the course of 3 days, gotten 21 hours of just consistent processing, which was way more than up here. So if you're talking about a differential here, we were doing 1.5 hours per week at most on a good week. And we basically took all of that, compressed that into— what's that? It's more than 10x or 15x in just 3 days. Now, the cost of this was $8,000. But the problem that I observed with this was that I ran out of money. I couldn't afford $8,000 sessions again and again and again and again, especially after spending this much per month. My, my, my bank account was dry. But again, I felt like I was at the end of my rope. So I was like, I just need— this is a Hail Mary play. It's got— I'm going to do everything I can. I'm going to maximize the amount of time in the processing and then see what happens. And hopefully that will have a big impact on me. But problem was I ran out of money. I couldn't do it on my own. And after going through these first 4 stages of recovery here, there were also 5 core problems that I identified just with the whole entire model. The first one was that I was very much dependent on a therapist, on an external person For my processing sessions, right? So I wholly needed this other person to walk me through the process, to calm me down, and I was 100% dependent, and I hated being in that dependent state. So that was like one of the first and biggest problem that I saw with this entire model. The second one is that was very inefficient. So there was a lot of communication that had to go back and forth. I had to communicate my my traumas. They had to interpret that. They had to ask questions. So there was a lag in the communication that caused things to be more inefficient. There's a lot of chitchat that happened. So we're just talking back and forth, even if I tried to move things along and make things go faster. And then also I was really reliant on them for the regulation of my symptoms. Yes, they taught me like some breathing exercises and some coping tools, but at the end of the day, I really had no control over the process, which kind of goes back to this first point here of being dependent. The third problem is that it gets expensive very fast. If you actually want to heal in a reasonable timeline, You have to put in a lot of money because you need to put in a lot of time because it truly is inefficient. Like we're talking up here. If you have a, let's say, even if you have a good specialist, you have a good therapist, you're really only getting 20 to 30 minutes per week of processing if you're doing one session per week. And again, that's 4, that's almost $500 a month. And if you're doing 3 times per week, that really only bumps it up on the high end to 1.5 hours per week. Now my clients, they're doing like this a day. You know, and this is costing, if you're going to a therapist, if you're going 2 to 3 times per week, $1,000 per month. It's like, it adds up really quick and you run out of money pretty fast. At least I did. I don't have that much, that kind of money. So it gets expensive fast and there's really no sense of urgency. Like this was actually a big problem with me going to therapists because I'm somebody who likes to move fast. I like to, I'm, I like to get shit done. Like I like to do things. And especially when it came to PTSD and mental health, I'm like, I want to move faster. I don't like one session per week simply isn't enough. And whenever I asked them, my therapist, like, can you give me other tools that I can use outside of therapy so that I can do work in between the sessions? They all said, no, it's too dangerous for you, Brad, to learn how to process these things, which really was just a cop-out. It's not too dangerous. They were just parroting what they were taught in school that it's too dangerous to do on your own, but it's not. So the lack of urgency here was a big problem for me because I really wanted to move fast. So even in the sessions, they wanted to slow me down. They wanted me to go a lot slower. And the last problem here that I observed is that there were no clear goals, no clear tracking, and no real game plan to actually heal somebody. I always ask them, what's the plan? How do I know if I'm improving? What's the goal? Even if I went there in, in with a goal, they wouldn't have a clear plan on how to actually achieve that goal. It's all very ambiguous. It was all very heady and it was all just, let's take things as they come versus having a specific goal and a specific clear plan, action plan to achieve that goal. And there definitely wasn't any tracking here. I'm a very analytical person. I actually have a background in engineering. So I was very, I was, I was very concerned about the fact that there's no way to actually measure recovery and they weren't giving me measurements. They might've given me some like little, like small measurements, like session to session, but there wasn't any overall cohesive tracking system that I could use to ensure that I was actually making progress on my recovery. And if you're interested in tracking itself, I have A video on my channel that's called I Cured My PTSD Tracking These 3 Numbers. So you can look that up and check that out if you want my full tracking system there. I break absolutely everything down and I go into it for about 30 minutes or so. Now, the biggest lesson out of all of this, again, after going through all this therapy, after spending $30,000, was that more processing time equals more healing. So what I observed as I went again through these evolutions From zero processing time to 30 minutes per week to 1.5 hours per week to 21 hours in 3 days, what I noticed is that as I put in more time, I got more healing. So there was a positive correlation to that. Now, that might seem obvious looking back, but it wasn't to me. And no therapist and nobody told me that, hey, if you put in more time with this processing, you will actually move faster. And this isn't a theory either. And it's not just my one experience. I've actually coached over 2,000 people and I track all their numbers. I go so deep into tracking all of my clients' numbers, and with every single client, the more hours they put in, the faster they heal. So more time processing equals more healing, more action, more results. Now, the solution to this of me running out of money was to learn how to heal on my own. So even though these therapists, they were doing a lot of fearmongering around how, how I couldn't do the processing on my own, how it was going to retraumatize me, All these things, blah blah blah blah blah. All these excuses that I didn't want to hear. I knew that if I was going to heal, I was either going to go into massive, massive, massive amounts of debt because I already spent thirty thousand dollars plus and I couldn't afford to do eight thousand dollars every weekend. I knew the only option at that point was to heal on my own, despite what everybody else was saying, despite what the therapists were saying. So that's when I went to this final evolution of independent healing. So this is where I. Just took it onto my own shoulders with my partner, did a lot of research, did a lot of experimentation on myself. A lot of things didn't work, but at the end of the day, came up with a solution and a system that allowed me and her to fully heal. And the coolest part, the best part about this is that you get unlimited sessions. Now, the cadence of independent healing is daily. You can do it anytime you want. There literally is no limit. You can do an infinite amount of processing. That you want. And again, the time spent processing here is 2 to 3 hours per day, which equated to 14 to 21 hours per week. This is just what I was personally doing. So in the morning, I would do about 1 to 1.5 hours. And then at night I would do again, another 1 to 1.5 hours every single day, like clockwork, because I needed to solve this thing. Now the money, free. It was free. More processing sessions did not mean more money. Like more processing sessions was absolutely free. And this is what happens when you learn how to do it yourself. Everything's free, and it's great. Now the problem with this, with the problem with the independent healing that I observed when I was going through it and when I was learning it, was that there is a learning curve for the tools. And for me, it took 18 months to really figure all of this out. There was a lot of trial and error. Like I said, there's a lot of research that went into a lot of reading, but mostly there was just a lot of experimentation, like going into my own mind, trying these different things with myself and my partner, and It just took a lot of time for me personally to figure it out. And the solution, and this is more for you because I already healed at that point after the 18 months, I was able to heal after I figured it out. But my solution really is this channel. Like I want to teach you guys my podcast. And I also send out a daily email teaching different things. So I really want to help you shorten the learning curve as much as possible so that you can learn these tools. You can start healing every single day. You can start putting in the hours. Without having to spend $30,000 and throwing all your money away. There's also a link in the description to my Broken to Unbreakable recovery program if you want to coach with me directly. But the most important thing is I want you to get value out of this video here. So if you like this and you want to see more, like and subscribe, and I will see you in the next one.
