A Therapist’s Guide to Finding a Therapist: What are you carrying?
When the urge to start therapy comes up, it demands attention. It can feel like a burst of energy moving through your body. The push to do something about what you’ve been carrying has finally arrived, and that drive deserves to be honored.
But in my experience, both as a clinician and as someone who has sat in the client’s seat, acting on that urgency without slowing down first can set you up for a harder search. You hop onto mental health directories, scroll through a sea of faces and bios, and realize you don’t quite know what you’re looking for. You book a consultation and spend the first ten minutes trying to summarize your entire world to a stranger, because no one ever helped you do that work first, so it all comes out like a dam bursting open.
This post, this video, and the reflective guide I created to go alongside them are here to do exactly that: slow you down in a way that helps you meet yourself where you are, and understand what you’re carrying before sharing it with someone else.
Here’s where it gets a little different from most health decisions you’ve made. When something is wrong with, let’s say, your knee, there’s a specialist for that. The problem has a location, and that location points you toward the right type of healthcare professional.
Mental and emotional health doesn’t work that way. It’s not as clear or linear. What you’re experiencing might live in your body, your history, your nervous system, your sense of self, or all of the above. It can feel tangled in ways you can’t fully see yet. And finding the right therapist requires a different kind of preparation. It requires self-knowledge.
So before we talk about directories, prepping for consultation calls, or insurance coverage, we’re starting here. First, grab a notebook or journal, or start a new note on your phone. Do you want to type it out, write it out, talk-to-text it, or voice-note it?
Next, I want you to take a breath with me.
I invite you to take a big, deep breath in through your nose for four seconds.
Hold it for one, two, three, four.
Release through your mouth for another count of four.
And one final hold for our last count of four.
Great, we just factory reset ourselves. Now, sit with each question below.
What is actually happening for you?
What has it been like inside your body?
What has it been like inside your mind? Do thoughts feel like they loop around and around? Are they going really fast?
Now, what about your body? What’s happening there? Where are you holding tension?
What life themes have you been experiencing?
What feelings keep coming back up for you? Sadness? Anger?
How long have you been holding this?
That’s it. That’s where we begin this journey. Take your time with these questions; there’s no rush.
Join Happy Nest Collaborative to stay connected for the next episode of my signature series: A Therapist’s Guide to Finding a Therapist. Grab the free or premium version of my guided ebook that walks you through what we covered in today’s blog post and more!
