Why is Therapy expensive?

This is an important topic. You deserve to feel good about making an investment in yourself firstly. If you feel questionable about investing in your healing and well-being, I suggest you pause and reflect there before proceeding. Therapy is long term term commitment to your own growth, health, healing, and development, and it will not benefit you to freeze up in financial fears mid way through therapy and not be able to complete healing what's asking to be healed. 

It's important to understand why you are paying the fee you are. Otherwise, paying for therapy can feel like unneeded stress circulating in your system. 

When hiring someone to help you evolve in your life, you are not only paying for the helpers time, but also the priceless years of personal and professional experience the helper brings to you.  For the provider, this is difficult to quantify, and honestly there really isn't a great way to do so as help isn't a commodity or discreet service. Most therapists, myself included, do the best we can to work with current market rates that are based on geography, level of expertise, and the complexity of the work they offer. Also in that consideration is cost of formal and ongoing education required to be able to offer services.

When I agree to enter into a relationship with someone requesting my support, I enter with my heart, mind, body, and soul. It has taken me years of personal and professional growth and development to do this work with you. That growth continues. My own development is ongoing, to be able to meet you here today. I must recharge and nourish my system, so I can nourish you.

You are not only paying me for my time, but my undivided attention and expertise.

The worst help in my experience has been with a practitioner who is otherwise stressed or burdened or burned out, or inadequately trained. Burnout, otherwise known as a chronically overwhelmed nervous system is brought about by many factors, but some include high levels of secondary tasks, practicing out of scope of expertise, untreated trauma and vicarious trauma, seeing too many patients, not enough time off, relentless exposure to pain and suffering without reprieve or joy, and countless other factors. Healing from burnout often requires therapist to leave the profession entirely for the short or long term, and is expensive, uncertain, and time consuming to treat. To help assuage these risk factors, many therapists and coaches don't hold conventional working hours because what is required of us to really be there for you is emotional, psychic, physical, mental, and spiritual presence. A good healer in my opinion is one who is completely present. 

You will know if you are working with a burned out therapist because you won't feel their presence. You will notice distraction, fatigue, overwhelm, pat "solutions", maybe the creeping in of the therapists own personal issues. There are many signs, and mostly you will be able to just kind of tell intuitively.

All that is to say, my rate reflects what I need in terms of hours I can work, and all the other expenses required for me to meet  professional costs and training expectations/needs, as well as what is needed to tune my own system.

My current rate is well within the mid range for similar offerings based on geography, experience, credentials, and expertise. It is also true that my education cost to help you has cost me well over $150.000, just for formal university education, and then well over $30,000 in additional trainings, and that number grows by the year.

Finally, I chose to not work with insurances for a number of reasons. Mostly, I want my time and effort to be spent with you - not with the insurance company. I regret that means my services end up being biased towards folks with particular privileges. 

If you need to see a provider who accepts insurance, many group practices provide that service and have the funds to pay salaried employees whose only job it is, is to work with insurances on your behalf. Thank those folks, their job is incredibly difficult.

My current rate is $175/hour session.