Having a good relationship with your therapist is priceless, which is why author Susan Shapiro says she lost it when her therapist "abandoned" her by moving away and she was left alone to work through her issues. But she pulled herself together and set out to find the shrink of her dreams...
When she first set out to find a new therapist, her top priority was cost. "The way the whole thing started was that my shrink was $200 a session, and if I picked a shrink on my insurance network, it was only a $25 co-pay," she says. "So I went on the [insurance] website."
Shapiro's problem: There was no way to really get to know each therapist on the website. "There is no apparatus in place if somebody wants to find a good therapist," she says. "In therapy, there aren't any meet-and-greet events. It's interesting because therapy is probably more important than anything in the world because you want to feel comfortable with somebody and you don't want to waste $100 on an intake session." Instead of seeing one or two to find the right fit, she figured she'd try the cost equivalent of one session with her previous therapist by using the next eight days to visit eight of the therapist on her insurance plan, hoping one of them would click.

So did she find the new therapist that she was searching for? Ironically enough, Shapiro decided to stick with her out-of-town therapist, seeing him when he returns to New York every six weeks.

How Shapiro turned her experiences into a book and a speed-shrinking event

Published 10/08/2009

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