What do I do if I need trauma therapy but can’t afford it?
If you’re on this page, it’s likely that you’ve been carrying a heavy internal load for a long time, perhaps as long as you can remember. Particularly if you are an adult child of emotionally immature parents, an adult child of immigrants navigating generational trauma, or you live with complex PTSD, you’re to some degree resigned to living with greater internal strain than most people you know for the rest of your life. But there’s another part of you that knows you need trauma therapy that leads to significant symptom reduction and remission. And then, you look at your life circumstances – you are familiar with how it’s not always accessible for everyone.
While I’m wishing for you to have access to quality trauma therapy, I want you to know that in your present reality, this doesn’t mean you’re out of options or helpless. There are trauma-informed lifestyle shifts and perspectives that can support your healing right now, even if you can’t afford therapy.
Aside from essential lifestyle changes, Thrizer is a platform that is helping thousands of clients access OON therapy for a low fee, and Open Path is a collective that connects people to therapists that offer a sliding scale.
If you’re a resident of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Erie, or anywhere in the state of Pennsylvania needing help navigating your options for low-cost therapy, I invite you to schedule a free consultation call with me.
TL;DR
Millions of people with complex trauma can’t access therapy due to cost, time, or cultural barriers. If you’re one of them, please remember, you are just as worthy (maybe even more worthy) of good trauma therapy with the right fit therapist. Lifestyle shifts like rest, connection, play, and self-compassion can support your healing in powerful ways. These shifts may even prepare your nervous system to benefit more deeply from therapy when it becomes accessible to you one day. Start by examining your lifestyle, and know that Thrizer, Open Path, and coordinating with your therapist are great options available.
Why it may be hard to access therapy
Let’s name the systemic barriers that keep therapy, especially specialty trauma therapy, out of reach.
Your family or community doesn’t support traditional therapy.
You don’t have insurance, or your plan doesn’t cover mental/behavioral health.
You’ve tried to find a therapist, but the process felt overwhelming or invalidating.
You’ve identified a therapist who you believe can help you, but they’re out-of-network, and your budget doesn’t allow for private pay therapy.
You work an inconsistent schedule and can’t commit to weekly sessions.
You’re a caretaker for someone who needs full-time support.
You don’t have financial resources in your family or support system to help fund your therapy.
Millions of people face these same challenges. Our healthcare and mental health care systems are, in broad-strokes, ineffective and disorganized. There is nothing wrong with you for struggling to access care.
Make your life therapeutic and trauma-informed
While therapy is the least stigmatized it’s ever been and is now often seen as an essential service for living well, your healing doesn’t have to wait if you are truly unable to access therapy. From a licensed therapist… please do not believe your healing has an absolute hinge on working with a licensed therapist. It would be disempowering to believe so.
While a therapist can offer interventions and personal presence to structure and accompany your trauma healing, much of the progress in mental health therapy does come down to how you take responsibility over your thoughts, reactions, habits, compulsions. Save yourself by implementing five trauma-informed lifestyle shifts that can support your recovery and overall life:
Understand your symptoms as survival strategies.
Your trauma symptoms have survival intelligence and survival brilliance written into them. Treating your symptoms as messengers carrying outdated alarms, instead of as unwelcome intruders on your life, is essential. Soften towards your own symptoms with self-compassion and patience.Meet your physical needs.
Rest, nourishment, movement, and connection are foundational. Trauma recovery doesn’t occur without tending to the body and its biological needs. Start small: take a nap, eat a snack, ask for hugs from your people, and stretch gently. Accumulated experiences of bodily safety repattern your nervous system towards safety in the long term.Spend time around calm people, animals, and places.
Your nervous system co-regulates with others. Being in shared space with calm, grounded people, even silently, can help you feel safer. If people aren’t available, seek out animals or safe places such as libraries, nature, spiritual spaces. Don’t place any of this on a hierarchy – animals as less valid sources of regulation than humans, humans as less valid than animals or nature. Accept without judgment what your nervous system CAN attune to safely, whatever, whoever, or wherever it may be.Connect with your resources.
Through the trauma therapy lens, resources are anything that make you feel safer, more hopeful, or more capable. This could be music, prayer, journaling, pets, art, or even memes that make you laugh. Lean into what helps you feel like you. Widening your capacity to connect with the good things reshapes the brain’s capacity.Prioritize play, fun, and connection.
Trauma is rooted in helplessness, fear, and isolation. Make an effort to enter into states of playful expression and creativity, and confront your barriers to connecting with others. Dancing, making art, singing, playing games, laughter with friends, volunteering, activism, community organizing — all are unique medicines that offer a therapeutic counter to your experiences of trauma & your trauma narratives.Therapy-adjacent healing services
These include support groups, group therapy, and community workshops. Engage in massage and bodywork, acupuncture, spiritual or faith-based healing, breathwork, sound healing.
Make these lifestyle shifts now. These lifestyle shifts truly aren’t just placeholders for therapy. They are foundational in living a life of healing, wholeness, and wellness. Trauma therapy lands more effectively when your body has begun to repattern toward safety, connection, and regulation. In some cases, these shifts may be just as important, if not more, than therapy itself. You’re already doing the work.
The Logistics of Accessible Therapy
If you’re doing all these things, but what you really wanted to learn about is how to access good quality therapy when cost is your barrier, here are three tips.
Have you heard of Thrizer?
Thrizer is a company that helps clients access out-of-network (OON) therapists by fronting the cost of sessions through their program, Thrizer Pay. Instead of paying for your therapist’s full session fee upfront each visit, you’re only responsible for paying your co-insurance.
Here’s how it stacks up against the other options to access OON therapy:
Cash pay: Pay your therapist’s full fee without relying on your insurance policy’s in-network coverage or out-of-network benefits
Superbills: Pay your therapist’s full fee up front, therapist provides you with a weekly or monthly superbill — an itemized receipt detailing that you paid for and are requesting reimbursement. You submit these claims to your insurance company and you wait for reimbursement. Your reimbursement check comes weeks later in the mail.
Mentaya: Pay your therapist’s full fee up front, therapist provides you with a weekly or monthly superbill — an itemized receipt detailing that you paid for and are requesting reimbursement. You submit these claims to your insurance company and you wait for reimbursement. Your reimbursement check comes weeks later in the mail.
With Thrizer Pay, you don’t have to…
Manually submit superbills to your insurance company
Pay your therapist’s full session fee upfront
Wait weeks for your reimbursement
You create an account and you pay your therapist your coinsurance. Thrizer is a game-changer for people seeking affordable therapy without the insurance headache.
Check out Open Path Collective
Open Path Collective is a nonprofit network of psychotherapy professionals who offer discounted services to members. Providers offer both in person and telemedicine services. Rates are offered at a significant discount to prevailing local prices for mental health services — with a range of $40 to $70 per session.
If you’re uninsured or can’t make out-of-network therapy work, cash-pay sliding scale therapy might be your best bet. Take a browse through the Open Path directory, making sure that you filter for your state of residence. Take the time to read through the provider bios, looking for someone who seems like they’ll resonate with you. Reach out to providers you have your eye on, and ask if they have openings for sliding scale.
Adjust Your Therapy Frequency
For the outpatient level of care, a therapist will traditionally recommend that you meet with them once a week. In this economy, and with varying norms of academic & workforce scheduling, four sessions a month can be a high time-demand as well as financial demand on you.
It is becoming more common to meet for one hour every 2 weeks, one hour every 3 weeks, or one hour once a month. Some therapists and clients create different treatment plans, such as to meet for one half-day, 3 times a year because that’s what fits not just their schedule, but also their budget and needs.
If you have never had the frequency of meeting discussion with a therapist before, just know that you can bring it up directly. Let your therapist know about your financial needs. Depending on the therapist, you will find some who are more than happy to be flexible with you and others who practice in such a way that the therapy would be compromised if frequency would be reduced.
Talking about the frequency of your therapy sessions may lead to a discussion about your responsibility and capacity to care for yourself between sessions, or a thoughtful exploration, reflection, and assessment of your needs and goals.
Your healing path is yours to walk, however you are supported
Take a moment to reflect:
Are you making space for rest, connection, and play? If not, what’s getting in the way of you making space and time for them?
Do you interrupt your own spirals in order to connect safe people and places?
Do you interrupt your own trauma narratives with actions and people that challenge them?
As far as the logistics of accessing therapy, if you have a dream therapist who is out-of-network but you can only afford to pay a copay or coinsurance rate for sessions, look into Thrizer Pay. If you’re willing to put in the work between sessions, talk to your therapist about a frequency of meeting that supports your budget and capacity, or check out Open Path.
Healing is possible, and whether therapy is currently a part of your healing journey or not, you shouldn’t do it alone. Chances are, you already aren’t working at it alone!
If you’re a resident in Pennsylvania, whether in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Allentown, or elsewhere, I’d love to support you or help you navigate your options. Let’s start with a 20-minute consultation today to begin your journey toward whole-person wellbeing.
About the Author
Chelsea Adams, LPC is a licensed therapist with over 7 years of experience supporting clients in their mental wellness. She specializes in intergenerational, relational, religious, and systemic trauma and uses a decolonized model of evidence-based approaches such as EMDR, Somatic Internal Family Systems, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, and therapy intensives to help clients connect to their own wisdom, voice, and power. Chelsea is committed to providing compassionate, expert care online for clients across Pennsylvania.
