WHERE TO FIND THE BEST THERAPIST FOR YOU // Who to call when you need to talk to someone

You've decided you want to talk to somebody. You're ready to make the phone call, make the appointment and get in to talk to somebody. You want a therapist? How do you find this person? How do you find a person who you're going to trust, who you're willing to be honest with, who you're looking forward to working with and learning from? Are they online? Are they in person? Are they a unicorn? Do they even exist? How do you find the therapist that's going to be the best fit for you? What's going on? Welcome back to my channel. Finding a therapist seems really simple, really basic. Google it, right? Everything is at our fingertips, but for some people, it's not that easy. So hopefully a few of these tips today will help you maybe think about it a little differently or. Oh, I didn't even think to ask that. So one of the first things you can do is you can figure out what you are looking for help with. What is it that you're struggling with? Have you been through a major change recently? Have you lost a loved one or been through a divorce? Do you struggle with chronic depression? Are you feeling really anxious about an upcoming change in your life? What is going on? You don't have to have all of the answers, but just some kind of idea what is bothering me? What is on my mind right now that I want to talk to somebody about? Maybe you're having problems in your marriage and you just need a third person who is not a friend, not a family member who you can just talk with and talk things through with. It doesn't matter. The reason you don't again, have to have all the answers, but just have some kind of idea what you're looking to start with. Things might evolve and come up and they can totally change. But. But right off the bat, what are you looking for help with? And then take that a step further. Do you want to talk to a male or a female? Is religion important to you? Do you want a faith based counselor? Do you need LGBTQ specialty? What is the other designations or things that are maybe important to you? I don't specialize in Christian based counseling. I, I don't specialize in personality disorders or bipolar. I specialize in anxiety. That's what people find me for. So one is not better than the other. But there's so many different things going on in the world and there's people that specialize in all of that. Just have an idea what's happening, what am I wanting to talk to somebody about? And then what's important to me, what kind of person do I want to meet with? Do I want an older therapist? Do I want a younger therapist? Do I want a millennial therapist who works with millennials? I have a good friend of mine who's a therapist, and she works with millennials with depression. So that's pretty specific. She does work with other kinds of clients who struggle with other things, but a lot of what she does is working with clients who are millennials in that age range who struggles. Struggle with depression. So there are so many different options available to you. You can just have an idea of what you're looking for and what kind of therapist is going to best help you get started and start to figure some of that out. Once you've asked yourself those questions or figured out if any of that stuff is important to you, there's a lot of things you can do to find someone, somebody you can call or go online with your insurance if you're going to utilize your insurance. And you might be able to see a photo and, or a bio or what they specialize in. And then you find somebody you like or you find a list of people in your area that are local to you in network with your insurance. And then you can search them online, or you can Google them, or you can see if they have a Psychology Today profile, and we'll get to that. So once you even have a list from your insurance company, you might not know anything about them. You can take that list of people that. It's just a list. It's just a list from your insurance, but then you can do some digging and find out more about who they are as a therapist and how they work with clients from that list. So I mentioned Psychology Today. Psychology Today, we pay for. We as therapists pay to be on Psychology Today. It's a database. We pay monthly for it. It's an investment to us. Not every therapist is on Psychology Today. It's not a rule that if you're a therapist, you have to be on Psychology Today, but it's a database that if I'm looking to be found in my zip code in my area. So you go on Psychology Today, you put in your zip code. From there you can put in if you're looking to utilize your insurance and what kind of insurance you have. If you. You're looking for somebody who specializes in older adults or kids or anxiety or bipolar. And from there you can look at how they work. Do they specialize in CBT or mindfulness or DBT or sports psychology? There's all these different Modalities and ways that therapists help our clients that are also listed on the site. So Psychology Today is actually really good resource that I recommend a lot because you can go in, you, you can put all your qualifiers in, in your area. You can find out if they're offering telehealth or not. You can see their picture, you can read a bio and you can get a feel for them as a person, as a clinician and really get a sense if I want to make this phone call, they might be good to talk to or Absolutely not everybody has their preferences. That's totally fine. So it's a good place to start as you're starting to weed some of these people out and find the best fit for you. A couple other things you can do instead of Psychology Today or in addition to it, or when you go and get a list from your insurance company or on Psychology Today, you can ask if you're comfortable with your friends or your family if they know of any of these people in the area or if they have a recommendation or, or. And some therapists might not appreciate this, but I do not care if people Google me. I don't care if people find me on social media. I don't put anything out that I'm embarrassed of or ashamed of or that is super personal. It's the Internet and once we put it out there, it's out there. So I'm careful in general what I put out on the Internet. I also put out a lot of psycho education about anxiety. So a lot of people find me through Instagram or they find me on Psychology Today and then they search me on the Internet and they find my social media and they see what I do and how I interact and the information I provide. And from there they can decide if it's a good fit. So I personally, when I'm looking for a contractor for my house or a therapist or a coach, I'm googling them. I want to know do they have a YouTube, do they have a podcast, do they have social media? It's not necessary. I don't need you to have a social media presence, but if you do, I want to see it. If I'm going to hire you, I want to know if you're putting things out there as a professional to help people, what that stuff looks like. But these are just little ways for you to see if hey, I really want to work with this person or no, I don't. Because they aren't faith based or they don't specialize or talk about depression at all on social media or all they talk about is anxiety. I don't struggle with anxiety. Right. If you find me and you're struggling with bipolar, I don't talk about bipolar. So I'm not going to be the best fit for you. And if you can find that out ahead of time, that's awesome. So doing your research is pretty much what it comes down to. And I always encourage people, inform yourself, do your research. The last step or tip that I have for you is to make phone calls. I get voicemails and emails all the time. I'm always calling potential clients back and saying, what are you looking for? What can I help you with? Is this a good fit? I ask them some questions and I can tell, oh, you're looking actually for a different kind of service. Or you need somebody who specializes in eating disorders or depression. I'm not the person for you. I am a big fan of refer, refer, refer. If I do not feel like I can help that person, I have no problem encouraging them to find a different name or I will give them resources or referrals if they're in my area. I don't want to work with somebody who I don't think I can really, really work well with and help. It doesn't do any good. It's going to be a waste of their time. So make the phone calls, talk to the therapist, ask questions, ask what they do. You don't do a whole intake session over the phone. I usually talk to people for 5, 10 minutes and ask them a few questions. I ask them what questions they have and it's a very quick way to weed out if I'm going to be a good fit or if I can meet their needs or be the best person to help them. And there are a lot of therapists who might not do consults. This is just the way I do it. I am just speaking on behalf of myself. If you can do a little bit of work on the front end and weed some people out and make a couple phone calls and then pick someone from there, you're gonna have a way better shot at finding that person and walking into the office and feeling like it's a good fit right off the bat than if you grab a bunch of names from your insurance and just pick one at random. People do that all the time and that's totally fine. Those are just my suggestions. You ask yourself, what's going on? What is the thing I want to talk to somebody about? And then what kind of therapist? What. What's important to me and from there if you're going to utilize your insurance or you go on Psychology Today, and then you can do some research online, if that's important to you, and then you can make a phone call, see if you can do a consultation for a couple minutes or whatever it is. So again, as therapists, I only can speak for myself. It really just comes down to you knowing what you want and just having a little bit of direction. This process can happen pretty quickly, but if you do a little thought and a little research, you're going to have a better chance of walking into that office and feeling really good about that person that you picked. Don't forget to subscribe, and I will see you next Wednesday with another video.