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!
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!