A panel discussion offering practical guidance for beginning therapy: ask trusted friends or church pastoral care for referrals; consider Pure Desire’s free clinician assessment and telecare options; check insurance and costs; start with an initial/consultation session and evaluate fit rather than assuming immediate expertise. Emphasis is placed on trusting a trained clinician (analogy to trusting a mechanic/Sherpa), being flexible in sessions, and using certification-based directories (ITAP for CSATs; APPSATS for betrayal-sensitive therapists) rather than generic Google searches. The speakers note limits in Pure Desire’s nationwide affiliate coverage and suggest using training-organization search tools as a logical starting point.
How would you practically suggest someone go about getting started with a counselor and taking those initial steps?
Well, first of all, maybe you know someone in your family of origin or your friendship or your work environment that is vulnerable enough to say, I sought help for a problem I've had in life. That's sometimes a trusted friend, someone that you feel like is vulnerable with their own story and really doesn't have any shame around seeking help. Those are always good people that I find that will tend to lead you away. You could go to our website, actually. Pure Desire is a wonderful way to begin to look, especially in our field that you can just. You can come and get a free assessment from one of our clinicians, and if they can help you, they will. And they'll also point you to other resources that are out there. So there's a number of things. Check with your local church, maybe in the pastoral care department. They have a list of resources at your congregation, someone specific in your area. We can do a lot through telecare these days, through Zoom and all that type of thing. Check your insurance. I didn't have. I paid $70 an hour back in those days. And that was a lot of diapers for those three kids of mine. So anyway. But it was worth the investment. So there's a lot of factors involved about where you should look and how. And again, not to under, spiritualize or over, but just ask God, lead me to people and resources. Maybe this podcast could be an answer to that prayer as far as guiding you to someone that could help you.
Yeah. I think one of the fears when looking for a therapist is, how do I know they're good or they're bad? And I think that the simple answer is, you don. But I think that, well, I would say you don't know if they're good or bad. And it's okay to have an initial session and then evaluate. I know with my therapist it was that, like, let's have a consultation, let's talk for about 15 minutes, and we'll see. Like. And what was interesting is he said, we'll see if I feel good about helping you, and you'll see if you feel good about me helping you. And so it wasn't just a, like, if you sign up, I'm ready to go. He was also evaluating. Am I a good fit for you?
Correct.
Are we a fit?
Yeah.
But I also think, like, if, if and when you enter into that space with your counselor, with your therapist, whatever it is, to not have these big expectations of this, exactly how it'll Go. I was just having a conversation this last weekend with a friend who was saying that she wasn't really loving therapy because she would get in and sometimes. Oh, it's funny. I was. Yeah, I was just having this conversation just this last weekend that it was. Sometimes we get into the session and I don't really have anything to talk about, and I'm like, yeah, and then what happens? And she kind of was exploring a little bit more, and I told her about my experience where there have been times that happens where I'm like, jacob, I don't got anything today. And he's like, all right, well, let's poke around. Like, how's work going? You know, how's stuff going with Amy? How are stuff with the boys? How are you doing taking care of yourself? And we'll find one. And then it's just like with Rodney. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, God, Rodney.
Wow, here we go.
But there are so many times where I've thought, I'm just gonna make this passing comment and move on to what I want to talk about. And then 50 minutes later, we're still talking about that same thing. And so I think that finding one and evaluating one, like, just start and then evaluate, but make sure that you're not putting the standard of we have to talk about exactly what I want to talk about. Again, this is the visual that comes to mind. It's like telling a Sherpa who's been up the mountain a thousand times and you've never been up once, telling him where to go on the mountain to get you to the top, that, like, he is going to take you places. You're not really sure what we're doing here. Why are we going back down the mountain to go back up the mountain? But that there's this person is an expert, and they know what they're doing. They have the training.
I think that's hard for a lot of us is to let go of letting someone trust us.
But to your point, again, is it hard to trust a mechanic when you hand your car in?
No.
The answer is no.
Not Auto Center Northwest Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. Government Avenue who is sponsored by Kenny. Kenny, thank you for your support in our banquet this year. We look forward to you being exactly. No, it's not at all. It's not at all. Because you trust. There's a trust level. You know, I have a mechanic in everywhere I live, honestly. And I have their number. And if before anything I call anybody, I call that guy and say, I'm In Mexico. Can I do this here? What do you recommend? Right, that's good. So I just think you have to trust somebody that's more competent than you and knows things more than you well.
And that's some direction we've given people who call in. And maybe doing Pure Desire counseling doesn't work for them. Or sometimes we do have a little bit of a wait is to look at the organizations that have certified people you do trust. And so we direct people to itap to find other CSATs, certified sex addiction therapists.
Right.
And you can find them located all across the country. And that means they've received the same training as Pure Desire. And again, you can look at profiles and their bios and see get kind of a feel for them. On the other side, on Betrayal and Betrayed Partners, we've recommended appsats. You can find counselors and therapists that have been appsats trained to be really betrayal sensitive. And so maybe finding that in your local area is a good starting point because I know both appsats and ITAP have a search function. You know, find a therapist in your area. And so rather than just going to Google, go to a page of a training organization that you've heard about or trust and use their search function because then they'll show you everybody in their area that's in good standing that they've certified. And that may be a logical starting point just to get real practical. And I know we've directed people to that kind of resource. At some point we really hope to have an affiliate network page. We do have some suggestions, but you know, when you're talking about the whole country, they're. They're kind of few and far between right now because we just haven't had the manpower or resources to develop all of that. So we're often just directing people to those websites and having them search from there.
