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Hi All, I would like to share once again my personal project, http://reparent.methat helps clients find therapists online. If you have ever wanted to filter out therapists who don't meet your philosophical baseline, you can finally do so. There are currently, 3 providers on the site from FDR. See if you can spot them With the most recent update you can see the following: I have added on a matching algorithm that matches you with therapists based on a questionnaire. Matching on important factors like religious and political affiliation We now have 17 providers (therapists, counsellors, life coaches etc.), most of whom work within the IFS methodology. Added SSL protection to protect your security while posting a request for therapy 100% free service for both clients and therapists If you or anyone you know is looking for an online (skype/facetime etc.) therapist, please share this with them. Also, if you know of any therapists who might want to join please direct them to write to me @ [email protected] Best wishes, Tony

Hi, guys! I wrote a book titled How to Find a Great Therapist, and I'd love if y'all would check it out. It's only 99 cents! The inspiration for writing this book came, in large part, from the many stories I heard on these boards about your struggles to find a good therapist. I also have FAQ at the end which consists of questions that came exclusively from FDR listeners. It's available on Amazon here. Please let me know what you think! Book Description: "This book is not just about finding a good therapist. It is about finding a great therapist. The kind of person who will inspire you, challenge you, and change your life. The kind of person who will help you make real progress. "If you are just looking for someone to talk to, this book is not for you. Throw a rock and you will find a mediocre counselor who will gladly take your money, go through the motions of “listening” to you for an hour, week after week, and never encourage you to change. And maybe you don’t want to change. That’s fine. Just check out another book, because this one will only stress you out. "However, if you want to thrive rather than survive, use this book to demystify the often muddled field of psychology. You will learn: How to identify an awesome therapist. How to know if you’ve found a bad one. What to expect from therapy. How to trust yourself. And how to improve your odds of permanent growth. "The author takes her years of “couch surfing,” during which she saw over twenty therapists and coaches, to simplify the process and help you make life changes efficiently and with the support you need. "This short book is jam-packed, full of principles that you can use to feel confident about an often confusing and stressful transition in your life. Make the choice to change your life and find a great therapist."

Hello Everyone, I hope you're well upon reading this (or on the path to wellness :). I'm writing to ask if anyone out there knows of a therapist in the NYC area who you'd be comfortable/confident recommending. I have tried 3 different therapists of various price, but haven't found one that was a good fit. I've read a few articles here in the forums and listened to the podcast, FDR1927 How to Find a Great Therapist!. Does anyone know of a good therapist hereabouts? Online would be a little too Max Headroom, but I can't say I've tried it. Thank you, All! Best, Al

My newest article about figuring out if your therapy is actually working for you or not. "Today’s question is extremely popular: I’m in therapy, and some people [my spouse, or parent, or friend, or coworker, or partner] say that it’s not working for me. I’m confused. Is it true?" Read it here: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2016/04/q-is-therapy-working-for-me.html

Hi Everyone, I'm looking for FDR members who are interested in practicing online, skype based therapy or recommendations of therapists who would be ideal for this project. I would like to​ invite you to become a partner in my new venture: http://reparent.me This software has been a labor of my love. It has taken me 5 years from the inception of the idea, thousands of dollars of my personal savings, hundreds of days of coding and testing. And this is a project that would not exist if I hadn't found FDR. I quit my full time job to work on this. Please help me make it succeed. What is it? It is a web based application to connect freelance online therapists with clients seeking therapy. It presently functions as a directory and​ an anonymous​therapy-request board but will grow to become an automated online assistant to people in the therapy profession. Why did I create this? On one side of the market spectrum you have clients desperately seeking help but unable to find it either due to a poor offering or due to the providers being out of their price range. On the other hand you have skilled adults eager to offer advice to the wounded masses but going through lengthy and unnecessary industry barriers-to-entry to reach economies of scale and justify their careers. I knew good counselors offering great prices, way below the market price for an average licensed therapist, but unable to get enough clients to make a sustained living. Not one of them was trying to undercut the market, they were only trying to reach the underprivileged, psychologically wounded members of society. There are 10 bad therapists for every 1 good therapist. I intend to fill this site with providers from the latter camp and thus make this offer on this platform. Join me and help make this world a little better. The site currently has two main features: A directory of therapists and counselors offering online therapy. An anonymous board where users can come and describe their needs, where therapists can make their offers and then the user can select one that suits him best. Also, I am working on the following features for the next release: Scheduling: Let clients see exactly when you are available and when you are off work. No need to worry about time zones. Get automatic email reminders before sessions Integrate with Google, Outlook calendars. Payments and invoicing: No more worrying about invoicing and charging clients. Set up automatic recurring payments Let invoices follow your calendar events (therapy sessions) In built cancellation billing procedure Payment provider integration: PayPal Bitcoin The site will continue to grow, but needs your loyalty and support. I have great new features on the way but it will take time and persistence. I request a 2% donation from the providers for all future business earned through or due to the site. This commitment will not be enforced for now but if you keep this agreement, I can avoid incorporation and thus avoid charging a fee, which would have to be more than 2% when including payment providers fees, taxes etc. How do I join? Check out the terms of service here: http://reparent.me/terms To get access to the site as a provider you need to register as a regular user (http://reparent.me/auth/register) and click on your profile icon, you will be presented with an option to "Become a provider". Your application will be sent to me, once approved your profile will be publicly visible. While I do make your provided email visible on the site, I've gone through great lengths to obfuscate it under the hood. This prevents spammers and other malicious users from having easy access to your email address. I also recommend you set up a gravatar (http://gravatar.com) account, this will be used to get your profile image on the site. The app is in the early stages and I'm looking for good therapists and counselors with a proven track record in talk-therapy. I will not accept providers who intend to recommend any form of medication. If you know people who fit the bill, please feel free to forward this message to them or let me know and I will approach them. Thanks for reading! You can learn more about me by adding me on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anthony.ebin.3 and join the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1024759567574157/ ​

A video by a friend of mine, Daniel Mackler:

My therapist currently has two spots available, so I thought I recommend her here. I am doing IFS-therapy since about one and a half years and can not speak highly enough of her. I am aware that finding a therapist is a very individual thing, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Before working with her I searched for a therapist for a long time and spoke to a good dozen different therapists without finding someone I was comfortable with. I know that it takes a while to find someone who is not only great but also a great match. Here some reasons why I highly recommend her : She is not religious and not "spiritual", but rational and consistent. She has over 20 years of experience with clients and has done the work in therapy herself. She is empathic, honest, patient, curious and kind. In working with her she always had my back and I always feel respected and taken care of. While I have been ( and am) working through some quite heavy subjects with her, there are always some lighthearted, humorous moments in our sessions. It feels good to me to be able to share my tears as well as a laugh with her. She has always been very flexible if something came up between our sessions, if I needed more or less time and if it was necessary to move our appointments. She is offering sessions through Skype and has reasonable rates (even a sliding scale). By the way, doing therapy through Skype has never been a problem for me and working with her was for me the best decision I ever made. If you are interested in giving her a try, write me a pm and I send you the contact information!

My friend lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm guessing it might be more difficult to find a good therapist where they are so heavily religious but does anyone have any suggestions? I don't see any resources on here. Thanks.

Had my first therapy session yesterday. It wasn't very fruitful. The therapist thinks she may not be the right one for me. I think I might agree but I wanna see it through a few more sessions before switching. Before I went to her I looked her up and found out she's a pretty serious Christian. I'm an atheist and have some pretty bad history with religion but maybe she can help. I mean it's possible. I don't have a car right now and she's the only therapist that's really walking distance. I've been reading self-help for a LONG time and lately I've gotten into Dr. Albert Ellis and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. Over that last couple of weeks I've been able to identify my irrational beliefs about certain things and not get too upset about certain things any more by using his stuff precisely. Being a smart guy and someone who tends to get very immersed in things, I wanna find a therapist who does REBT in particular since I'm reading about it but it's not absolutely necessary. If I don't think the therapist is sharp or I'd say someone who impresses me with their ability (as I am with anyone I'd listen to about anything) I tend to not wanna take them seriously. Thoughts anyone?

Hello all, I am a long-time listener of FDR who has just opened a psychotherapy practice where I see clients both in-person as well as over Skype. I started listening to FDR back in 2010, and it had a huge impact on my life, sending me deep into the study of psychology and self-knowledge. This study has been my major pursuit for over 4 years now. I am currently enrolled in a Clinical Mental Health Counseling Masters program so that I can get legit in the USA, but most of my education has come from other activities. Over the last 4 years I have around 2,000 hours of journaling focusing on understanding my deepest self, and over 800 hours in co-therapy with self-knowledge motivated aquintances. In addition, I myself completed 2-years of weekly in-person psychotherapy, over a year ago. I have also read widely on psychotherapy, particularly of the "humanistic" variety, and continue to study the works of other therapists, to the present. And now I am very happy to offer to others my capacity for empathetic understanding of the personal and difficult things we so commonly, but often secretly, face in life. As a therapist-in-training, I am offering my services at a real premium. Easily 25-50% the standard rate of practicing therapists. If think you might be interested in working with me, I offer a free initial consultation of 60-minutes. If you have more questions about my services, please see my website where I discuss many details of my service, including FAQs about how I do therapy. www.kylerchambers.com Looking forward to hearing from you. Kyle

I thought the number was kind of high, he would have to have at least 40, but he says it's better to come every two weeks, so he could have 80. How many patients should a psychotherapist see per week? He said studies show it is better to have therapy once every 2 weeks for the patient. Is this true? I can't believe it, because I hardly get anywhere even in one hour once a week. Thanks for replying

Hey there, this is for the people who've had experience with great therapists in The Netherlands. I myself are not in need of one at the moment but i know someone who does and she has had a lot of bad experience with psychologists/therapists here. They are not curious, they recommend her to just obey her parents because they are her parents and they think she needs serious help because she does not want to do that etc.She(and me also later perhaps) needs someone who has experience with handling traumas and talking about childhood, preferably in a way like Stefan does because i know its really effective for a lot of people. But any good therapist recommendation is welcome!

My apologies if a similar thread exists, but I couldn't find one after a quick search. I am wondering if there is a website that displays good therapists (for FDR standards)? Or if anyone in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota has any recommendations, that'd be great too. I just don't want to waste my time or have a counter-productive experience with a bad therapist. Also I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to determine if I've found the right therapist (questions to ask them, etc.); or if it really just comes down to my personal experience and if I feel like I'm growing and learning versus feeling bad and frustrated. I've never done therapy before, so I'm not exactly sure what to expect or look for. Thanks!

INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS (IFS) THERAPY MODEL by DR. RICHARD SCHWARTZ Hello! Thanks for checking out this new forum. I wanted to open this space up for anyone currently practicing or interested in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model. I learned about IFS from Stefan's interview with the creator of the model, Dr. Richard Schwartz. The podcast is here: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/1575/you-are-not-alone-freedomain-radio-interviews-dr-richard-schwartz-freedomain-radio I am so grateful for having been exposed to IFS and I am hoping to spread the model because I have seen incredible results in myself and others. In addition to using the forum to share IFS experiences I would also like to offer my services to any and all who are interested. I have been integrating Internal Family Systems therapy within my own self-therapy and the work with my clients for the last 8 months. I was recently accepted into the official IFS Training Program and completed my first leg only a few weeks ago. The intensive training ends in August when I will be listed on the official IFS site as a trained IFS Therapist. Until then, while entrenched in IFS training, I am offering HALF OFF on all SKYPE therapy sessions until September 1st as I make the transition away from the my current model into the IFS model. Despite being within the training, I am highly adept and confident in the use of the model. I strongly believe this model can help one discover who they really are in a deep and profound way. Whatever the struggle, IFS is incredibly powerful, loving, and all-accepting. You can send me a personal message or take a look at my website http://www.conormcmillen.com for pricing information. I really look forward to posts on this forum! Thanks again for checking it out

Hey all, I thought I'd go through and transcribe, and add some structure, to Stef's podcasts that gave me those 'aha' moments that indicate the implosion of some part of my previous conceptions and in the void an influx of knowledge and reason. Feel free to leave feedback on the format, I could include time stamps or links to other podcasts if it is useful. Here is 'How to find a good therapist' 00:00 - 17:35/46:57 Movie reference: A Beautiful Mind A therapist is someone who checks the reality of what you are seeing. Stef undertakes a moral exploration of the question ‘What is therapy?' He believes that if we have suffered from the predations of evil people, unfortunately we are lost in society - people will not say “Damn! That was evil, what happened to you, I’m so sorry”. They will clam up, keep a distance, shun and ostracise people who put them on the spot to make a moral judgment about what happened to the other person as a child. “Don’t get involved” seems to be the mantra of society, because we are addicted to betraying the victims of evil (see other podcasts). If I say I suffered at the hands of X as a child, people will feel agitated at me for putting them in a place to cast moral judgment; with this comes an onus of deciding to act against the evil or to do nothing. Contrast this with society where people are more than ready to cast judgment; Drug users, Evil! Homosexuals, Evil! Tax-avoiders, Evil! If you’ve suffered evil, as most people have, particularly if you have suffered as a child: you have the feelings of rage, vengeance, all these primal feelings you have pent up inside you. Its like a big crater of a volcano that never erupts, it wants to spew out but has no outlet. The after effects of evil cannot be assuaged on their own; we are social beings and we need outside input to validate what is going on. We need to turn to people in society and say “Listen, do you see that devil in the room? Do you see that evil?” How many among us will say “Yeah! I see see that! That’s terrible!”?More likely we will hear, “Ah maybe there is evil, maybe there isn’t just get over it. It’s your family, your culture, your religion, your nation get over it you’ll never get around it. Even if there is evil, think of the good in the evil person! You must have loyalty to them because of family/religion/culture.” With Nash’s hallucinations in A Beautiful Mind, people either say, “Yes, I see the people you see," or “No, I don’t see anyone". There is a definitive truthful ANSWER; if people don’t see the evil at least Nash knows he’s hallucinating. In society, in order to avoid awkwardness we don’t get an answer. If there is evil, people will say they don’t see it just to avoid having to act. The person inquiring with society has no root to reality; the rest of society deny him his chance of a definitive answer as to the reality of his experience. We are stuck with the effect of evil because nobody will socially accept the existence of the evil. Politically, however, people are more than willing to accept it; as long as it does not require them to act personally against an evil, people are more than willing to decry evil and give true evil the power over those decried. People have trauma because they have experienced evil, not because they have experienced misfortune. Take, for example a person who’s mother died of cancer when they were the age of 9. People will say “My goodness, that is awful, how terrible!”. If they have a great Dad he will help them through it and they will have the memory of their mother to grieve with and it should not lead to permanent psychological damage because the reality is accepted by everyone around the person. What if people said "I don’t know if she had cancer, is there such thing as cancer? I don’t think we can keep being friends if you keep talking about things like this.”? People are opposed to fundamental emotions: ardent love, passion, integrity, virtue. That’s why we need a community that reveres these most fundamental human traits. If you had a culture that denied the death of your mother, you’d go insane. "Be friends with cancer, it’ll make you tougher!” people would say. You would not be able to heal, inside you’d be living in a void; your experience would be so fundamentally undermined, so you could not feel anywhere near accepted in society. Your feelings of loss and anger and grief would be rejected or attacked. This will give you a permanent psychological problem until you see a therapist who says “Oh, my gosh that is so terrible. Tell me about that,” which means you still have to deal with the denial of reality by your society outside the therapist’s office. Anything serious or real threatens the collective psychosis. …

There should be a thread of recommended therapists that people here have been to.I imagine most people who got interested in seeing a therapist through FDR will not really be aware or know good therapists. Therapists aren't cheap either.We can list therapists by name, website/yelp, phone, email, location.Is there already a big list already? If not, it will be immensely helpful and low-cost to people to list good therapists they've been to.

Hi everyone. I had an interaction with my therapist that I want to run by the self-knowledge lovers in the community.A while ago my therapist said that 99% of parents do the best they can with that they have. It bothered me at the time but I didn't want to interrupt her. In the next session, or maybe two sessions later, I reminded her what she said and told her I didn't think that was true, that at best it is meaningless and at worst it excuses bad parenting and miniminzes good parenting. She seemed to think about it for a second and said I made some good points. She basically agreed and said that she actually doesn't think it is true that most parents do the best they can with what they have.I asked her why she said it then, and this is the part I'm concerned about. I must have fogged because I don't remember how excactly she answered the question but my impression is that she excused her inconsistency, basically with something along the lines that people like to think that parents do the best they can. At some point after I asked, she told me that I was welcome to email her about these ideas (she called them theories which struck me as strange). She said that the things I was saying would get a room full of psychology graduate students talking.When she said this, I felt flattered and pleased. I also felt scared at the prospect of emailing her about such things. I kind of expected her to be curious as to why, but she didn't ask me about the fear and I didn't press the topic.I feel weird about this interaction and am hoping someone here can help me figure out what that feeling is about. Specifically, I am wondering if I was manipulated into getting distracted from my therapist's inconsistency or if I am reading too much into it.

Here are my thoughts on why your Therapist might suck. What do you think? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCKWdNKup4