Practical guidance for finding and working with trauma-informed professionals. Covers therapist certifications, treatment modalities, support groups, and what to do when your spouse won’t get help.
A therapeutic separation is a structured, time-limited period of living apart under written terms. Both partners stay in their own clinical work, and a date is set to review. It is not a trial run for divorce. The purpose is to stop the daily re-injury long enough for real work to become possible. Living under … Read more
There is no specialist within ninety minutes of you. The one practice you found is not taking new patients until autumn. And there is a subscription service advertising licensed therapists, available this week, for less than half what the specialist quoted. You want to know whether that is a real option or a compromise you … Read more
You called your insurance company. You asked whether they cover couples counseling. Someone read you a sentence from a screen, and the answer was no. That answer was probably correct to the question you asked. It was also the wrong question, and the difference is worth several thousand dollars. Does insurance cover couples therapy? Not … Read more
Three names, three websites, three people who would each describe themselves as a Christian who helps with marriages. One holds a state license. One holds a certificate from a ministry organization. One holds both, and one holds neither, and the websites look remarkably similar. You are trying to work out who to call about the … Read more
Most specialists offer a free consultation of fifteen or twenty minutes. Most women use it to be interviewed. You answer her questions, she seems kind, you book. Six weeks later you are three hundred dollars in and realizing she thinks this is a communication problem. That call is yours as much as hers. Here are … Read more
You have two names in front of you. One is a licensed therapist with a six-week wait and a fee that made you put the phone down. The other is a coach who can see you Thursday, costs less, and — from her website — has been through this herself. Everything you have read says … Read more
You keep going because stopping feels like quitting. But you have noticed that you brace on the drive there, and that the hour rarely goes where you needed it to go, and that some sessions leave you smaller than you arrived. You have probably concluded this is your fault — that you are resistant, or … Read more
“I don’t need a therapist.” Or the softer versions, which are harder to argue with. I’ll go if you really want me to. Let’s just handle this ourselves. After this quarter. I’ve already told you everything, what would I even say to them? And you are left holding the entire weight of a decision you … Read more
The idea of it is almost worse than the thing itself. Sitting in a circle, or a grid of faces on a screen, and saying out loud what your husband did — to strangers, in your own voice, with nowhere to look. Most women put this off for months. Then they go, and a startling … Read more
Nobody gives you the total. You get a session fee, quoted over the phone in a voice that suggests you should not have asked. You do the arithmetic for one person, weekly, and it is already uncomfortable. What you do not get is the shape of the whole thing — that this is likely two … Read more