How did you decide on your therapist?
 

We got new insurance this year & it just occurred to me that counseling services are likely covered with an affordable copay. I need to verify the financial side of it but I started looking at the list & got overwhelmed pretty quickly.

Psychologist? Psychiatrist? Counselor? I have addiction on all sides so I'm guessing by all that I've read here that finding someone with that specialty makes sense for me even though *I* am not an addict.

How did you find your best fit? I don't think I need intensive therapy but I would like to get some feedback on the recovery work I've done independently & see if this can help me smooth over some rough edges.

I found the psychology today website extremely helpful. You plug in your zip code and what specialty you are interested in and it gives you a list of counselors in your area usually with a picture and almost always with a little bio. That's how I found my therapist now. I was looking for a trauma specialist but happened to see on her blurb that she works extensively with addicts.

Phycologist is more along the lines of having drugs prescribed. My AH sees one for anxiety meds and he sees her like once every 6 months or less.

I use a counselor/LMFT (licensed marriage and family therapist) for myself and that's what AH uses for himself too. Both of ours specialize in addiction. I really liked the website of my first therapist and I liked her during my initial appointment with her, she was great to get me going but we stalled out after about a year. My new therapist specializes in addiction and codependency. Our marriage therapist was a RN that worked with a lot of addiction and then became a LMFT too. I wasn't thrilled with her style of therapy though, she wanted to do a lot of modeling with us and that doesn't really work well for me.

None of them accepted insurance so I had to go back through and submit claims to my insurance on my own. That seems to be the norm around here.

Unless you think you need to get started on a specific kind of therapy or treatment (like treating PTSD or behavioral therapy) or think medication would be necessary then I personally would look for a LMFT that has experience in addiction. Also, a LMFT can always refer you to a psychologist if you jointly felt like you could benefit from visiting one, and I personally feel that it's always better to have a referral.

Just my experience. :) Hope that helps a little bit.

I saw a couple different therapists before I decided on the one that was the best fit. I ended up with a psychiatrist because I needed serious help and medication. A psychologist couldn't prescribe anything, so it was pretty pointless to go that route. My daughter sees a psychologist for her weekly appointments (she's autistic). I think trial-and-error is the best way to go.

Whoops, I mixed up psychologist and psychiatrist. :e088:

hi FireSprite! firstly what i did was just what you are doing - i asked for advise here! i kept hearing go for a psychologist so i googled that for my city and looked and looked.

i prayed. alot. i was in crisis but wanted to make the right decision. i truly feel i was led. i found a site that had pictures of the staff and each had written their own blurb on how they approached therapy. loved what this one person said, called and he had a cancellation and got me right in. and we clicked. he's been a Godsend, truly. i got in financial difficulty and told him i would have to stop and he has waived the copay ever since! a lovely, caring person who is very good at what he does.

best of luck FS.

I picked one through my EAP and another one from her internet listing bc she said she liked working with codependents! :)

Depends on what you're looking for. (Helpful, huh?)

I started with counselor. Because I didn't need a psychologist to explain to me what was wrong with me; I needed tools to go with my Al-Anon tools to handle my everyday life.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have looked for a counselor specializing in addictions who has a working knowledge of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, DBT. That basically means working with radical acceptance: Instead of saying "But I love him when he's NOT drinking" it taught me to say "I loved my husband and he was abusive" without my brain freaking out about the cognitive dissonance. I've learned to hold two contradictory thoughts/feelings and look at them to find out which one comes from "my wise mind" and which one is unhealthy.

Psychiatrist is only necessary if you think you have an underlying personality disorder or serious mental illness, in my mind. Depression/anxiety, most GPs can prescribe drugs for -- although psychiatrists ARE better at knowing what drug works for what. And twice as expensive as a GP.

I gotta disagree about the psychiatrist vs GP prescribing psych meds. I wish GPS wouldn't prescribe psych meds, in fact. They just don't have the training and many times try to take on more complex cases than they should. I can't tell you the number of times I have taken care of patients in the hospital who were royally screwed up with medications because they were having this GP manage their meds.

Thanks guys, I'm busy with DD's activities today but I wanted to let you all know that I read & appreciate your thoughts. This is all very helpful!

I think the difference between these different types of practitioners is the degrees they have and what they are allowed to do as a result. A psychiatrist has gone to medical school, has an MD degree, and can prescribe meds, but they usually do relatively short visits and don't have time to do talk therapy. Therapists have either a master's degree or a PhD (usually in social work or psychology) and they can't prescribe medication but they do talk therapy. You can see both a psychiatrist AND a therapist if you want talk therapy AND meds--this is what I do. I see the therapist once a week and the psychiatrist every couple months for a med check.

I will second the Psychology Today website database to use for finding a therapist. I had a therapist I liked a lot who was retiring, and she recommended that to me as one resource for finding someone new. And usually once you find a therapist you like, they can recommend a psychiatrist if you want to discuss/try meds. I agree with the above poster who said that psychiatrists know more about getting meds right because they specialize in mental health, compared to GPs who have a medical degree and can prescribe psychiatric meds, but have to know a little of everything and don't specialize in mental health.

Firesprite-

I had two really helpful therapists along the way and I found them differently.

With all of your body work that has helped in recovery may I offer that I have found a lot of relief from types of therapy with a big component of either mindfullness and/or body/somatic therapy.

I do a type called Hakomi which I have liked a lot (actually I hated it, but now really love it), but there is a branch called Somatic Psychology.

Initially I did more just talk work and DBT stuff which was really important for me also but the Hakomi has been where I have really seen some changes.