And more importantly, how do I find a therapist who is right for me/for us?
That’s the underlying question.
And we’ll get to that in a second.
You are looking at this image, wondering what a potted plant has to do with finding a therapist.
And rightly so.
But I am here to tell you.
The short of it is this:
I have been meaning to buy some plants for my office for a long time.
Since last April, to be exact.
But, I was waiting to find someone to put some floating shelves on the wall in the waiting room so that I had somewhere to place them.
After I finally got help with that (I am not very handy with tools and drills), I then found a window in my schedule big enough that I thought – I am going to do this.
Now, you must understand, I know nothing about plants.
Which is exactly why – before I went out to the store – I looked online for some plants that would work for the space that I was envisioning them for.
Plants that don’t need direct sunlight.
Plants that don’t need much attention because I tend to not know the kind and amount of attention that they would require.
So I looked.
And I found a really sweet list of plants that would work well for my purpose.
Little did I know then that it’s not such a great idea to do this on one of the coldest days of the year.
We’re talking double digits below zero.
I bet if I would have asked someone who knew, they would have told me right away – you don’t want to expose the plants to frigid weather. They are not meant to survive that.
Well, so I learn the hard way.
I brought the plants in, watered them just a bit (they seemed to not need much) only to come the next day and find most of the leaves looking like they have bee whipped by wind and rain. Or like I put a torch to the outside of them.
They literally looked like they aged by a decade just overnight.
If I only had known…
And I covered them in a hearty plastic bag, too, so as to keep them more protected.
The store provided that so I figured I better use it.
I am not that clueless.
And I tried to keep them inside the car during transport where it’s warmer than in the trunk.
Even though one of them was pretty big and it must have looked like Christmas happening all over again right there, inside my vehicle.
I still managed to kill them.
After about a week of resuscitation efforts, it was clear to me they were not coming back to life. So I ended up throwing them out and vouching to myself that I’d never try this plant thing again.
Enough about plants – what does any of this have to do with your way to find a therapist?
I hear this story all the time.
Looking for a therapist is a difficult endeavor for many.
I recently just heard the numbers of the providers for one particular insurance company in the state of Minnesota that contained double digits in terms of how many pages were provided, double digits of lines per page and 3-4 columns each page – that’s how many providers you get when you are looking.
That sounds overwhelming, doesn’t it?
(Even writing it was. And yes, I am aware that it’s a run-on sentence. To my point.)
How do you find a therapist – how do you find the right person?
And when I say homework, I mean research.
If you don’t know or can’t tell that what you need help with is something the therapist does, and you should know this by the time you take a quick look at their website, you call them to verify.
For me, I specialize in couples counseling.
If someone calls me and says they need help with their addiction or they state that their son has an eating disorder, I thank them for calling and help them get a referral for someone I KNOW treats eating disorders.
If they call about treatment specific to trauma, I do the same thing.
If they ask me whether I see kids, I say – I love kids but I don’t have the specific training necessary to do play therapy with 4 year-olds. That’s a whole ‘nother animal.
Because that’s not what I do.
It’s not what I am trained in or have experience doing.
It would be the equivalent of me saying, I can help you pick out plants for your garden.
I am open with people and only take on the clients whom I wholeheartedly believe I can help.
Look for a specialist.
I don’t want your story to include the if only I had known part of mine.
Now you know.
PS: And, if you need to buy a plant or are trying to do your own landscaping in the back yard, don’t ask me. 🙂
If you need to find a therapist in the Minneapolis area and are having difficulty doing so successfully, please give me a call and I will do my best to be as helpful as possible and point you in the right direction.
If you are looking for marriage therapy in the Minneapolis area, I might be a your girl. Schedule an initial phone consultation here and let’s see if I am a good fit for your spouse and you and we’ll go from there.
