Noeticus Counseling Center & Training Institute

FAQs

• What should the customer know about your pricing (e.g., discounts, fees)?

  FINANCIAL STATEMENT TO CLIENTS Counseling and psychotherapy is an investment in yourself, your relationship, and/or your family. For this reason it is important to pay a fee that reflects both the value of the services you are receiving as well as the importance you put on your growth as a person, couple, or family who is choosing to use these services. Over and over, we have found that when our clients pay fees that reflect their level of commitment to the therapeutic process they tend to benefit more from our services. As the clinical staff at Noeticus Counseling Center and Training Institute, we are deeply committed to the profession of counseling and psychotherapy and have spent a good portion of our lives and invested a great deal of our personal resources in order to bring you the the type of attention, care, and expertise you deserve. We also have a strong investment in providing innovative and effective counseling and psychotherapy to anyone in our community who is interested in it and all of our practitioners are continually learning, growing, and integrating new modalities so that we are able to provide this. At the same time, we also are firmly rooted in the belief that we need to ensure that the type and quality of our services is affordable and available to individuals, couples, and families in our community who otherwise would not be able to afford it. In order to reach these goals, we do the following things: • Keep our Standard Fee Low: Many private practitioners charge as much as $145.00 per hour. Although we are experienced psychotherapists with a great deal to offer, we keep our standard fee of $110.00 per hour relatively low so that more people can access our services. Thus if you are in a position to pay our standard fee, we ask you to do so. This enables us to provide adjusted fees to others who aren't able to do so. • Offer an Adjustable Fee Schedule: If you are not able to pay our standard fee at any point during the therapeutic relationship, your therapist will work with you on determining a fee that accurately reflects your investment in yourself and your present life situation. We ask that if you situation changes, you let your therapist know so that your fee adjustment can be re-negotiated. • Work with Insurance, Cafeteria Plans, and Health Savings Accounts: Though we are not preferred providers on any insurance panels, we will work with you so that you can submit out-of-network insurance claims to your insurance company or claims to your cafeteria plan or HSA.

• What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?

  The professional standards of practice, ethical guidelines, and legal requirements associated with the field of psychotherapy all require practitioners to be competent in their respective areas of expertise in order to maintain their credentials. All of the clinicians and practitioners at Noeticus Counseling Center take this requirement very seriously. Indeed, they receive an intensive orientation to our clinical model when they begin with us. In addition, they participate in weekly in-service trainings, weekly individual and group supervision, and quarterly intensive trainings. Many of our clinicians also partake in outside classes and trainings beyond the minimal requirements for training and licensure. We have a very strong commitment to ongoing education and excellence.

• What advice would you give a customer looking to hire a provider in your area of work?

  CHOOSING A PSYCHOTHERAPIST by Ryan Kennedy, MA, LPC, LMFT, RN, BC-DMT, CACIII The choice to work with a psychotherapist is an important one for many of us as part of our personal growth process. A good psychotherapist can help us see ourselves in new ways and provide important feedback to us about areas of our lives that are stuck or aren’t working very well. Because this is such an important relationship, it is especially critical that we go into the process of choosing a therapist as an informed and engaged consumer. Psychotherapy is a broad concept that can refer to a wide range of services and modalities. For instance, psychotherapy can refer to an in-depth exploration of early childhood experiences in order to gain insight into how these experiences have shaped our present lives. It can also refer to a very immediate way of working with current problems in a time-limited, direct fashion. Psychotherapy can be done individually where a therapist works with one client, but it can also be done working with a couple, a family, or in a group setting. Each type of service and therapeutic modality has its advantages and disadvantages and so it is crucial that we have some way of determining which type of service and/or modality is right for us at different points in our journey. This is especially true given the fact that some services or modalities might actually make things worse for us if they are done too soon or without adequate types of support provided. Choosing a therapist, therefore, is an important decision that we would be wise to take seriously. All too often people end up choosing a therapist because she or he is in a particular insurance network or has an office close to where we live. These are certainly realistic factors to consider, but they should not be the deciding factors. The factors that need to be considered include such things as the following: • Do I feel safe with this person? • Does this person have experience working with my particular areas of concern or issues, like relationship dynamics, substance use, or trauma and abuse? • Does this person actually have specific training in working with trauma, including a sound theoretical understanding of how trauma affects people and how it is worked with therapeutically? • Is this person licensed or registered with the state? • Is this person working with a supervisor or consultant so that she or he is not practicing in isolation? Of course there are many other things to consider when determining which therapist to work with and what kind of modality to pursue. Having an idea about what we want or don't want and what questions we want answered can help, but we are often going to a therapist because we don't know where to start or we don't always have a very good understanding about what would be helpful or not, so we are trusting them to help us make these types of decisions based on their expertise and training. One of the things we can do in order to help find the right therapist to meet the kinds of needs we have at a particular time in our lives is to take some time before calling anyone to capture some of our thoughts and questions on paper. We can do this by talking with other people about their experiences in therapy, by checking in with ourselves, and by researching the Internet, books, and magazines about common questions and issues that people have when choosing a therapist and starting therapy. Once we have come up with a few questions we can start calling therapists to interview them as part of our selection process. Many therapists will offer a free telephone meeting or personal consultation session as a way to meet, ask questions, and get to know each other a little bit before deciding that a therapeutic relationship is right. It is a good idea to take advantage of this type of service because it allows us to be more informed consumers so that we can actually make a choice about who we want to work with rather than just defaulting to the first person we find. Being an informed consumer and making a choice about who our therapist is are two important steps in setting up a therapeutic relationship that will be based on trust and respect. In terms of therapeutic modalities, of course there is no one way that works for everyone. The important thing is for us to be active and involved in the process and to let our needs to known. For instance, many people find it helpful to establish a trusting therapeutic relationship with an individual therapist before starting a group. This makes sense for a lot of people because the group experience can be overwhelming and triggering at times. For other people, however, the may do well to start with a support group because it is less threatening than the individual focus of private therapy. Then if things start to become difficult, they have a support system that can help guide them into the right individual therapeutic relationship. Again, there is no right answer or right way to do this, but knowing that we have the right to ask questions and express our needs and concerns can help ensure we are going in the right direction.