Are you on insurance panels?

 

I have found that going on PPO/HMO plans has a number of disadvantages, including restricting my availability to those that need specialized trauma work. When people are often desperate to regain their ability to function, I'd rather be helping them heal than devoting a large portion of my time dealing with managed care. For this reason and many others, I do not seek participation on managed care panels. I do, however, accept out-of-network benefits from managed care companies that have established their reliability and trustworthiness with me.

Some therapists that are on insurance panels say they "specialize" in trauma but are running a general practice with trauma as one of their areas of interest. There is a vast difference in the approaches used by therapists that are true specialists in trauma and those that aren't. A true specialist is aware of new research developments in the area of trauma and the brain, the role of ANS dysregulation , is trained in quality integrative approaches, does "bottom up" therapy, understands phase-oriented treatment, and relies on the trauma model, among other things. Rigorous studies have found that traditional "talk therapy" approaches WILL NOT make the traumatized person better and, in fact, can make them worse.

Managed care companies are not in the business to reward therapists for reparative work, they're in it to make a profit. And they definitely don't keep up on research so they can steer you to the right type of care. If they have to part with profit, they're going to pay therapists that compete for the lowest pay, whether those therapists are good at trauma work or not. It's as though managed care would rather shell out money for treatment that doesn't work--or may worsen your condition--than invest in healing your overall mental and physical health.

During healing work, the length of session depends on your natural processes, not what the clock says and not what managed care says. I have structured my business to allow flexibility so you can complete your process in your own time in most cases. This ensures that--when it's time to leave--you are safe, "with it" (i.e. grounded and not dissociated), and understand what to expect after a healing session. This does not fit readily with scheduling "factory-style" in order to bring in enough managed care dollars to make ends meet.

The majority of people that come to me have tried traditional therapy for many years, sometimes as many as ten or fifteen, and haven't been able to obtain the results they want. All of them are aware of the costs associated with this. If you want factory-style, "band aid" treatment, don't come here. If you want healing with bang for your buck, you've come to the right place.