------- additional ranty side notes---
in person therapy is a waste of time/money for most people unless you're so wealthy you can afford the wise old superstar in their field (most of the best have already dropped dead of old age).
less charitable: those who knock the easy/free/practical-yet-harmless-woo are kinda just protecting the value of their profession / special modality, consciously or unconsciously imo, like doctors who don't accept basic fasting thats been around a thousand years, eating keto/carn, or benefits of natural immunity... lol
I say don't be loyal to any 'experts', steal whatever works from their cheap books and youtube and other resources across modalities and put together a hodgepodge of stuff for yourself!
Research and libgen and then buy physical books and highlighters and a journal and especially a medium/large STUFFED ANIMAL with expressive eyes to mimic eye contact while to talk out loud to instead (like rubber ducking with trauma) and do it yourself. You can process feelings privately, keep a journal of progress and try one book/method at a time at your own pace.
Most normal people (esp men) can't cry in front of strangers, but can cry in private.
ONE session of therapy is $50 to $150, and only gives you one hour with barely ONE insight or emotional moment a session. Thats after many sessions of fighting defense mechanisms and intellectual tricks to maybe get to the real meat of what's painful.
The classics of the field are mostly books that cost $10-15 as paperbacks on amazon and each can provide MONTHS of insight /catharsis if you DO/work thru feelings that arise as u read each chapter instead of just reading it and throwing it aside for the next book.
People just race thru and don't APPLY anything, that's as useless as reading a programming book and not trying any of the code/psets. Slow it down, only one chapter a week, the same way in person therapy is only one hour a week, the insights/feelings that you chew on the other 6 days until the next session. Make a schedule and DIY.
Unplug your alexa and phone and u can say stuff out loud to your plushie that you cannot legit say to a therapist-- they are truly a stranger with LEGAL BUREAUCRACY and social programming makes them often unable to handle realities of anyone unlike themselves.
Therapists gossip and share stories at parties and know little about real privacy in the digital age where two random anecdotes can google-fu most clients.
The lame psych majors you met in college are the same people your insurance will cover a pathetic 10 sessions with. They get bored and tune out or jump to their fave diagnostic buckets when they can't untangle your issues and unconsciously need to make themselves feel more competent.
The money is bad so they compete for clients and aren't going to tell you hard truths that would HELP you when that risks being dropped, a bad review, bad word of mouth, or risk of legal/license headache.
You are just paying for a 'legitimized' comfort zone, rather than a strong helpful truly honest person to guide you out of your own misery-is-safe-and-familiar comfort zone.
Incentives are not on your side.
The types of people that become therapists are not emotionally hardy, mentally strong, stable, world-weary people with a strong sense of character.
If you knew any in real life as friends, you would never hire them.
Seriously consider what you disclose and reset your expectations.
more ranty side points----------
therapy is like the 80-20 garbage/quality ratio of all fields, especially the affordable ones most likely a mediocre broken person with their own baggage/desires/ego they'll project onto you.
Good luck being a hot girl, philosophically and politically anything but a very liberal humanist, having any personality type that isn't already a feely crier who understands your emotions, any one with working class common sense, anyone with aggression, bitterness and/or less 'nice' presentations of symptoms or a myriad other demographic factors. These aspects SO OBVIOUSLY influence the undercurrents between mediocre therapists and patient but they swear as professionals do not or are just further 'grist for the mill', eye roll...
You're not gonna magically book an appointment (with or without insurance) and get like Irvin Yalom wise jedi soul that can cut thru your bullshit with affectionate firmness, nor will you get the smart self-dignified composure of Melfi/Paul HBO fictional therapists that created standards of excellence not realistic in real life....
Most practitioners are kinda weak people seeking status and comfort and easy wins, difficult patients annoy them subconsciously, they emotionally flinch from them and truly do nothing to earn the trust necessary for 'real' therapy magic to work.
(Everyone recommending "get therapy!" on every thread online is just a middle-class reaction formation, an automatic unthinking refrain when THEY can't handle their own emotions of uselessness/systemic helplessness against the pain and grim reality of being an individual in the world.)