Why is it so hard to find a therapist near me? Why are all therapist booked?
I gotten so many calls over the past 2 years with people saying “I have literally called 20 therapists near me and none of them call me back”. It is important to understand the reason why so that you can move forward with your process of finding a therapist.
Many people take it personally (“I must be a horrible person because even a THERAPIST won’t call me back”) and then stop trying to reach out. Please don’t let therapists not calling you back get in the way of your journey for better mental health. It has nothing to do with you or how you left your voicemail. Please keep reading so you can have some answers. If you want TIPS on finding a therapist, click here to read a recent blog post I wrote.
So why aren’t therapists calling you back?
- There aren’t really excuses because therapists (who are TRAINED in communication) should be calling you back to let you know if they are booked.
- More and more celebrities are talking about their positive experiences in therapy which is encouraging their fans to do the same. This is an amazing thing because for so long, therapy was seen by much of society as a thing for “crazy people”. In fact, a majority of people who go to therapy are the most well-rounded, put together people that you will ever meet. Why? Because they go to therapy! (And because they are willing to look at themselves and fix what they don’t like).
- I stopped taking insurance a few years ago because I was getting paid the same in 2019 as I was in 2009. With my costs going up, it just wasn’t sustainable to take insurance anymore. Click here to see an article I wrote on this. What happens is that clients want to use their insurance (because that is why they have insurance), and therapists are exiting insurance panels so that all therapy services end up being out of pocket expenses. This limits someone’s choices because it creates another barrier to finding a therapist. One solution is to pay your therapist out of pocket and then get reimbursed directly from your insurance company (this only is possible if you have a PPO insurance plan).
- Many therapists took the opportunity to retire during the pandemic. Older therapists who weren’t as computer savvy and were already thinking of retirement went ahead and retired. This kept them from having to deal with technology during the pandemic and also kept them safe (since older people are/were more at risk for health issues related to COVID) when everyone was starting to go back to the office. This caused there to be less therapists available to clients.
- People who were “almost done” with therapy, now have a lot more to work to do. People who never experienced anxiety and/or depression prior to the pandemic were starting to experience anxiety and depression during the pandemic. This created more of a need for mental health services. On top of that, people who had a handle on their anxiety/depression (or other mental health struggle) prior to the pandemic and would have otherwise discontinued therapy ended up staying in therapy to learn ways to manage their new anxiety/depression that made their existing issues worse.
- The world is a harder place. Due to politics, our country is getting more and more divided and people are having less social support to vent to and get support from. When you can’t talk to your friends and/or family about an issue (being gay, thinking about an abortion, etc.), you need to process your feelings and get support SOMEWHERE. Therapy tends to be that “somewhere”.
My hope is that by you understanding the reasons why it is so hard to find a therapist, you will be less likely to give up in finding one.
If you live in California and are looking for a therapist, please give us a call at Long Beach Therapy: 562-310-9741. We WILL call you back!