A Good Therapist Is Hard to Find

The windows are down, even though it’s painfully humid, Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” is blasting, and you’re going 55 MPH as you approach a stretch of road where the palm trees wave like fans down a red carpet. You can smell the perfume of the beach nearby. Your breathing grows heavy. Loud. Heavier. Louder. Your hands tense, firmly gripping the steering wheel. Tight. Tighter. Until your hands look like a sculptor’s work. Your right foot weighs the pedal down, until the car is gradually going faster and faster. Until you realize you’re going too fast, too far, too long. Your heart is pounding. Thump, THUMP! Thump, THUMP! THUMP, THUMP! Every beat feels more and more like one punch after another. And suddenly, tears burst out of you like a cork popping off a champagne bottle. Each drop feels sharp, painful, and persistent. The moment feels fitting for a lifetime until your hands loosen their grip, your breathing steadies, and your foot eases on the gas. You feel your tears more like a drizzle than a storm. You turn the radio down. But you’re still driving. Except now you’re wondering what the hell just happened and how you made it all the way across town. You’re having a panic attack. Life isn’t particularly unbearable. You are settling into a fairly new job. There’s no pressure from work or school. So you can’t figure out what’s going on.

To others, it’s just an outward display of a wilted smile, a crinkled nose, a clenched jaw, a burdened brow, and eyes submerged miles and miles deep in an ocean of thought. To you, it’s a physical place called depression. Your burdens are still there. You’re still you. But you learn that you’re not traveling alone anymore. You now have a travel buddy. You will likely always carry the weight of depression with you for the foreseeable future. There’s a sense of comfort knowing you’re not alone, that people all over the world share similar symptoms of depression. You’re not the first. Nor will you be last.

You know it’s depression from the one panic attack, the sudden crying spells, sometimes for no reason. But if you’re being honest, you think it was always there—even in childhood— those birthdays when you couldn’t explain why you felt hollow, the moments when you should have been happy but couldn’t bring yourself to smile. It showed up one day and never left. Kind of like that mole you found. You probably should get that checked out.

It takes years before you have the courage to take the plunge. The stigma is real. You grew up in a household that treats vulnerability as weakness. Vulnerability comes easily to you, but once it wears the names anxiety and depression, it no longer feels acceptable—only like denial and shame.

Searching for a therapist is overwhelming. You start a Google search for therapists in the area. Living in a metropolitan area as big as Orlando means there are hundreds of psychologists whose main focus is anxiety and depression in adults. But do you want a psychiatrist? A psychologist? A Licensed Clinical Social Worker? A Master of Social Work? Once you narrow that down, you ask yourself if you’d feel more comfortable with a man or a woman. Do they accept insurance? If not, how many sessions can you truly afford a month? Once you narrow down a few, you call and find out there isn’t availability for another two months. What now? Do you go with your second or third choice? Fourth? Tenth? After all that searching and no one can see you for two months, do you just call the suicide hotline? They’re free, right?

List of filters to choose:

Gender: Female (Because if you have to share your deepest insecurities, you just feel more comfortable sharing them with a woman. Maybe this is something you discuss with the therapist?)

Specialty: Anxiety, Depression (You think that’s what you have.)

Insurance: Yes (Thank God!)

Type of Therapy: There are too many to choose from. Sand play? You don’t think so. Too messy. Ketamine-assisted? Too much, too fast. Dance movement therapy? You just want a good old-fashioned couch to sit on and spill your guts.

Thankfully, you don’t have to resort to any kind of hotline, but you find a therapist... eventually.

You walk into the waiting room. Of course, they don’t take your insurance. You pay upfront like one does with a prostitute. What if you don’t like the service? You’re nervous. This feels like a first date. Oh, she’s calling your name.

The therapist calls you over and takes you to her office. You sit down. A couch. Like in the movies. The couch is uncomfortable. “Hello. How are you doing?” Your therapist asks as you walk into her office. “Good.” you carefully respond. Good? No, you’re not. If you’re good, why are you even here? You’re sure she knows it’s just what people say. Then your next inclination is to ask how she’s doing. You pause. But you feel you’re being rude if you don’t. Although if you do ask, you feel like you might cross some kind of line. This is your session! Should you be wasting your precious $200 per hour session asking how SHE’S doing? You ask. You don’t even remember if she responds.

She asks what you’re doing here. You are quiet. You remember that this isn’t cheap and you continue in silence because now you’re stuck in your own head. You’re staring at her. She’s staring back, but not in a judgmental way. She is patient while you figure out where to start.

Your eyes begin to well up and blur as they pool with tears. You don’t know what to say.

It’s a start.