5. Know how much resources you have for what you are going to therapy for.

5. Know how much resources you have for what you are going to therapy for.

Ok so we went through 1. Know if you want in-person or online. and we decided what we wanted, we are going with trusting our gut and go through 2. Trust your gut.  

We went through 3. Make sure you are seeing someone legit. and reviewed why it's important you know how someone is safe to see. We also talked about being clear with why you are going to therapy with 4. Be very clear with your scope of work.  

Now we are on 5. Know how much resources you have for what you are going to therapy for.  

5. Know how much resources you have for what you are going to therapy for.

So it's important to know how many resources you have for what you are going to therapy for, for your therapist and for you, as it's important for treatment planning and also for your expectations. As we know, expectations and clarity have everything to do with safety and delivering what you want and how you want it, and walking away feeling happy with your time and money. So knowing your resources is going to be important.

So for this point, knowing how much resources you have for why you are going to therapy, I'll give examples if that's ok.

So the top insurance plans I've seen include 1) Scotia Bank workers, 2) Apple workers, 3) IBM workers, 4) other software and bank workers, and Federal workers, some provincial workers.

Their scopes of work, and why they are going to therapy, might look a lot different than someone who may not have so many resources to go to therapy, and we might want to be very specific and very focused in our sessions.

Some other benefits with not as great coverage let's go with provincial workers like healthcare or education, or let's say a student coverage.

Compared with a Scotia Bank worker and Apple, who have up to $10,000 a year for coverage, we have more wiggle room to explore their scopes of work, be more supportive to certain grievances, and be able to focus on symptom reduction in such concerns like anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship concerns.

For clients with limited resources, we might want to be really hyper-focused to make sure we get the most work done in an area of focus that is acute to ensure clients' welfare is protected.

Say the client has coverage of only $3,000 a year, they are switching therapists for whatever reason, and we have only $2,000 left of this fiscal year. So we want to divide that into the therapist's fee; for the sake of simplicity, let's say the therapist's fee is $200 a session. We say, ok, we have 10 sessions, we are going to work together, what is realistic, what makes the most sense to focus on, what's going to help the most.

Say the client wants to work on interpersonal issues, but what comes up is sleep disturbances they have been minimizing. We might say, ok, does it make sense we want to improve overall mood and functioning by working on sleep vs. going to interpersonal issues right away? Yes, of course, sleep disturbances are more critical primary functioning and interpersonal functioning well-being secondary; that is common sense.

So we attempt to see improvements with sleep disturbances immediately by working with the person's defenses of minimizing, bringing them into awareness, and we practically work on sleep disturbances. If we are not practically seeing improvements, we will say, ok, there is something else going on; let's go back to when the sleep disturbances first began and start working on reprocessing those stressors. Reprocessing means allowing the client to see what 1) where their coping started that may have developed to be blocking other processing, 2) if they are coping from a certain bad thing that happened in the past, we want to heal them from the pain of the bad thing that happened in the past, and 3) allow them to heal from it and think and feel differently about it so they are not internalizing this bad thing that happened to how they see themselves or their relationship with themselves.

Summary

✨I hope to effectively highlight the importance of understanding resources when seeking therapy. 

📈I hope to clearly differentiates between clients with varying levels of coverage, emphasizing the need for tailored treatment plans. 

💬I hope to provide examples to help illustrate my points, making the information more relatable and understandable. 

🧠I point out focus on prioritizing issues based on available resources is practical and highlights a client-centered approach. 

💪Overall, I hope this conveys valuable insights for potential clients regarding therapy expectations and planning.

Lee Park, RCT-C, MA, BHons
www.canadaonlinetherapy.com

Art Credit: Pusheen created by Claire Belton, Andrew Duff, and Jillian Christianson. 

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