I am on a quest to find a therapist. I haven't gone to therapy before. It always sounded like a good idea, and I know lots of people who have been benefited from it. I don't have any real reason I haven't gone before. My best explanation is that I express my feelings through sarcastic blog posts. Yeah, I know, not actually useful, except when blogspot responds "and how does that make you feel?"
But now that I am heading into my one-year anniversary of the diagnosis (is there a different set of anniversary gifts for illness than for marriages? If not, I guess May 2nd is the "paper" anniversary for my tumor. Prescriptions, explanations of benefits, and test result print-outs would all be good presents, if you were looking). But I digress. With the life-changing/threatening diagnosis and treatment, seems like a good time to try therapy.
I used to run a mental health agency, so I know people who know people. I had some of them give me some recommendations. The inter-web gives me an idea of who might take my insurance. So, I chose a nice psychologist from amongst the recommendations and set up an appointment. I liked him, but turns out he is both location- and insurance-undesirable. Turns out that even though I thought I could head south of the river for therapy, I can't. It was a fine session, but the idea of getting on MoPac every Thursday at 5 and sitting in traffic for an extra 90 minutes is a deal breaker for me. I's not that I don't like South Austin. I don't. Sorry, but I really don't. Been a north Austin boy my whole life.
It also turns out that every therapist lists my insurance as one they take, with the caveat of "out of network". What this actually means is that they don't take my insurance.
So I set up an appointment with an LCSW (one of my people), who was a little-more geographically desirable. Called my insurance company, who explained they would pay absolutely nothing for it. Hey, I testified to the Texas legislature a few years back in favor of mental health parity rules that make sure mental health is covered the same as physical health. It passed. But it isn't. They also let me know they actually farmed out mental health coverage to some place called Magellan. I called, and waited the requisite two hours on the phone (hey, he was out of the office looking for the fountain of youth, or the City of Gold, or something). But when I finally got to talk to the famous explorer, it turns out that yes, they only pay for in-network therapists. And while there are (and this is not an exaggeration) just over 6,000 therapists in central Texas, there are exactly 39 who take Magellan. Take out the geographically undesirable, and the list drops to about 20. Oh, and one fun thing I found - since I ran the Austin Child Guidance Center for almost eight years, at some point I actually employed a significant percentage of the therapists I was finding. This knocked out another 8 or 9 from my short-list. But admittedly, these were more focused on children. And while play therapy doesn't sound like a terrible idea right about now, probably not what I actually need.
So, I now had an ultra-short list. I started reaching out. Three of them never got back to me. Two said they weren't taking new patients. One sounded like she was in the midst of some type of mental health crisis of her own.
Which narrowed me down to my final list. With exactly zero therapists on it. Finding a therapist is going to be the first thing I talk about in therapy, assuming I could find a therapist.
I don't have an unreasonable set of criteria. Someone who: takes my insurance; has an office north (or at least not south); doesn't sound suicidal; hasn't worked for me (or didn't go to high school with me - this was actually another problem I found); and utilizes at least some of the therapies I have heard of (CBT, DBT, humanistic, systems, gestalt - yes, I know what it is and even took a class in it) and doesn't focus too much on interpretive dance, journaling, and the like). How hard can that be?
Recommendations welcome. Though, admittedly, I feel a little bit better just writing all of this down.
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