“Therapy Near Me” seems like the way people are looking for therapists these days on line. It looks like the number one google search when someone is looking for therapy. But what I am curious about and would like to shed some light on is if that is the best way to find a therapist.
When I search Therapy Near Me. The first things that comes up on my desktop are the big companies with the big ad bucks. First, as always is the unethical Better Help. I guess they are all online, so technically they are near you. Next comes some other heavy hitters with big budgets, maybe more ethical than Better Help maybe not.
The next things “Therapy Near Me” will lend is the big therapist search engines like Psychology Today or may Good Therapy. These are pretty good resources for finding a match. They will not only search by who is around you but you will get some really good information about the therapists and how they work, before you even make a call to them.
A Therapy Near Me also pulls up that map, which can be helpful if you are looking to do some work in person and maybe trying to avoid the online / virtual environment. However, there are still a lot of these business only or mainly providing virtual services so that also may not be helpful.
So instead of searching therapy near me what should someone search. To me when it comes to therapy, I always tell people you are looking for a good fit, and that just takes time. Making phone calls, sending email, to people you believe that you will connect with. If a therapist is not willing to talk to you without jumping through a ton of paperwork or not willing to take time to talk to you at all or maybe only for a very short time. It would make me concerned as a potential client.
Therapy Near Me, might be an okay way to start narrowing down who you might want to start working with but in the end a conversation will be the most telling and asking questions about how a person works and what working together might look like.
Need some good questions to ask…
How are you seeing people virtual / in person? You just want to know up front if you will be doing one the other or both.
What would you say is unique about how you work with people? Is this person trained to do anything unique or do they just work in a unique way that might be bad or good for you.
How do you conceptualize what I am describing to you? This can let you in on how they see you and working with you. Do you have a mental illness, is this a challenge that people have and can be managed and overcome, is this something that is really common for people with your background and absolutely something that can change or be healed, and so on.. Just get a feel around the perspective your potential therapist will take.
How many clients do you see a week? What is your caseload like? This can let you know how burnt out your potential therapist is, how much flexibility they have, and ultimately how much time they will have to dedicate to thinking about the work they are doing with you. Over worked and underplayed therapists are NOT typically good therapists. Just getting this general sense can be really helpful.
These are just a handful of questions that I think are important, but asking about insurance is important as well and knowing why or why not a therapist might or might not take your insurance is good to know too.