Wow, you write a whole article about your fee, seems excessive...
And maybe it is, but I've found that understanding the why something is the way it is, gives us space to decide if it's the service for us. So you don't have to scroll, my fee is $200 per 50-minute session. Now if you want to understand the why, my explication is below.
Deeper Client Attention:
When I first started as a psychotherapist, working in a public space in crisis support, I found quite a few burnt out therapists around me. While these therapists cared deeply, the excessive amount of clients they would see on a daily or weekly level left them without the energy or internal space to really attend to their clients needs.
As I got into private practice, I unintentionally did the same thing, and it took me quite a while before I could unravel the harm I had done in my psyche and body. Going forward from that experience I set my fee high, in order to ensure that I could provide extremely attentive client care.
Support for Community:
While therapy tends to exist in a space of one-on-one relationship, a core concern that I often hear from others is a deeper desires to impact their community. By setting my fee higher, I'm able to provide for those who need a sliding scale, in order to do work with me, and those that can afford my full fee help assist those that can't impacting their community directly.
Intensive Work Incentive:
The work that I do with individuals is deep, and is meant to be that way. I am not really a "check-in" therapist, I'm one that wants to go into the depths of things with you, and do that work. Because of that, I find by having my fee higher, it helps people stay in congruence with the work, listening to how their mind and body is changing, and also checking in with when they need to stop.
My Fee is Relational:
I have had clients that have come in, paid my full fee for a while, and then had a life change, where they could no longer make that happen. And when that happened, we had a conversation, and adjusted things to a level that could work for both of us. Therapy is odd, in that it's a service, that also blends relationship, and it's important to keep both of those elements of the work alive.
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