Hello,
Lately I have been overwhelmed with my schedule, finances and social life. I am always trying to improve my mental health. With all of this stress I am considering therapy, mainly for someone to talk, to process all my thoughts, and maybe help me develop ideas or come up with strategies to cope better. I have ADHD, Autism, and some other things if that helps anyone relate.
I have three main questions:
Has therapy helped you enough to be worth the time?
Is it very difficult to find a therapist you mesh with?
How do I find a therapist? From a doctor’s referral? Online service? Through insurance? (I live in the United States.)
Any experience or advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated!
Edit: I just wanted to thank everyone for your help and support! I hope everyone is doing well and has seen positive changes. And I hope all these replies help other people besides myself. I’m feeling more positive and hopeful toward finding the right therapist. Your kindness is appreciated!
I went through nine therapists until I found one who’s actually been helpful.
Did you use the same resource for finding a new therapist each time? I’m honestly a bit overwhelmed by the search.
It can definitely be overwhelming. Sometimes the therapist was just the first one chosen after I got a referral from my doctor, another time I found the website of a local therapy private practice and found the therapists profiles on there and chose one, another time I made a list of potential therapists from psychology today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists) and emailed all of them, and some times I got put in some mental health program and just had one assigned to me.
The only advice I can give is just start seeing a therapist, don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t go great, just think about what they do that you like and what you dislike and try another one, maybe even starting off with a new therapist by discussing this.
Over the years I’ve learned about a bunch of different types of therapy (CBT, ACT, DBT, psychosomatic, etc) and I know exactly what works best for me. It was a long and painful journey to get there though, best of luck.
Thanks for your followup! That’s really helpful!