How Marriage Counseling Raleigh NC And Individual Therapy Can Strengthen Your Relationships (With Yourself AND Your Loved Ones)

Even though Wake Forest is a relatively small town located just north of Raleigh, there are a lot of mental health practitioners out here with very different specialties (e.g. substance abuse, couples counseling, play therapy) and credentials (e.g. LCSW, LMFT, PLC, Ph.D, PsyD)*. If you are looking for a therapist, counselor, or psychologist in Raleigh or Wake Forest area- I’d would like to help you find someone who can help. I broke it down to 3 easy and digestible tips below.

Tip # 1: Use directories to find your marriage counselor (and don’t use insurance)

The days when I used to recommend calling your insurance company to get therapists’ names and then call them up are long gone. If you try doing that, you will probably end up with a very limited number of therapists who either live too far away from your location, don’t take new clients, or stopped accepting your insurance like 10 years ago (but the system has not been updated). Plus, most of the plans cover very limited amount of sessions anyway while compromising client’s needs and confidentiality. As a result, a lot of therapists are moving away from accepting insurance directly, and instead consider themselves to be “out of network providers”. Which means that at the end of the session they can provide you with a so called “super bill” that you submit to your insurance company for possible reimbursement while being responsible for the full fee upfront.

Depending on your out of network benefits, you can get between 0-100% reimbursed to you by the insurance plan. Anyway, since more and more therapists do not participate with insurance companies directly, they use a number of different directories to list their services.

Some of the most popular directories are: Psychology Today, Good Therapy, Online Counseling Directory, and Secular Therapy Project. Most of them allow you to look for a counselor by location, age group, gender, specialization and so on .Important things to consider: Photo-look for a professional head shot (without pets or car selfies), specialty-can they help you with your specific problem? (if they talk about sand therapy for kids on their profile and you are looking for marriage counseling, it probably won’t work out, website: do they even have a website? If yes, I am going to cover this in the tip # 2.

Tip # 2: Use Google to find your therapist

Good old google (well, I guess not that old actually) can help you. To start, use the keywords and your location or zip code. For example, “couples counseling in Wake Forest, NC”.

Then click on the links that google gives you and do your research. Similar things to consider here as when using the directories above.

Website: do they have an updated website that doesn’t look 20 years old? Do they sound like they know what they are talking about? Do they have videos? Do they have blogs?I think videos are super important because they can help you to get to know the counselor and their style without even calling them first.

Reviews: Do they have reviews (on yelp, google etc). This one is tricky because technically our code of ethics discourages therapists to solicit testimonials from their clients (to protect clients’ confidentiality, which is always our number one priority). However, since we live in a culture that heavily relies on reviews ( I mean, most people don’t even go out to a sushi restaurant without first reading reviews), some therapists (including myself) have professional testimonials on their websites. These testimonials are written by colleagues who know them professionally and hence, do not compromise clients’ confidentiality while providing value and comfort to potential clients.

Specialty: I think this is is extremely important. I mentioned this analogy in my other blog on how to actually choose a therapist, but I am going to repeat it here: If you need a hip replacement, are you going to go to a generalist who knows a little bit of everything or are you going to find a specialist who has been trained and has experience in hip replacements? I bet you would pick the specialist because you’d want to make sure your legs are of equal length (ouch!) and your joints are not dislocated after the surgery. I know, I would! Same in therapy!

Tip # 3: Ask Family and Friends to help you find a marriage counselor

Don’t be shy to ask people you trust for advice. These people are in your life for a reason and you probably share similar values with them. So, if your sister thought that Russian therapist Irina from Wake Forest was very relatable and her direct style helped her (wink), you might find that she is a good for you as well. All the credentials and training aside, it all comes down to whether you can really trust that person.

If you need more help than this blog can give you or want to schedule your free 15-minute phone consultation with me, click here. I offer the best marriage counseling I can! You can also check out the FAQs to learn more.

This is not your typical weekly kind of therapy. I am here to help couples and individuals in relationships do what is proven to work to help them heal their relationships. Through marriage counseling Raleigh NC, marriage retreat in North Carolina, online therapy North Carolina, and individual counseling, there is something for every couple who wants to heal their relationship.

Stop wasting years of your precious life trying to feel happy. Schedule your free 15-minute consultation with me today by clicking here. During the call, you will discover how having a place to heal your relationship with a guide can take you from the hurt to a healthier relationship than the one you grew up with.