Kristin Hirt, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

I offer you emotional safety for exploring and more deeply understanding your experience of vulnerability, conflict, or stuck-ness. When we collaborate in the healing process, we'll be tuning in to and drawing from your strengths - your enduring resilience, your essential wisdom, and your creative spirit - as the foundation for addressing the real challenges and struggles you face. I'll help you to anchor yourself with compassion and validation, to become empowered to find your voice, and to practice new communication and coping skills. From a wider lens, I'll help you to see new choices for change that are both meaningful and practical, and that more fully align with your core values, sense of purpose, needs, and goals as you move forward into the life you envision for yourself.

Therapy is not one-size-fits-all, and goodness-of-fit with a therapist can offer a felt sense of emotional safety - a prerequisite for uncensored self-expression and feeling heard, seen, understood, and accepted. There are as many ways to make use of therapy as those engaging it. As a seeker of therapy, you may have a more concrete, situation-specific concern that you'd like to sort through in the short-term, or you may have a longer-standing pattern that you'd like to more deeply understand. Perhaps you've experienced a lack of nurturing support, past or present, and you'd like to experience the benefit of a reliable, focused, supportive presence through the ebbs and flow of your life over the long term. All are valid ways to engage therapy. However you'd like to engage the therapeutic alliance, some factors worth considering in choosing your good-fit therapist include... Specialization: If you already have some clarity on the themes you'd like to address, it's beneficial to find a therapist with experience or specialization with those themes. Licensure status: A therapist's licensure status, whether pre-licensed (often referred to as "associate") or fully licensed, is required to be displayed with their name, and can also be verified via the state licensing board online. License verification will also indicate how many years of post-licensure experience a therapist has, as well as whether there is any history of disciplinary action by a licensing board. Experience: The practice of therapy is both an art and a science, and the more years of experience a therapist has, the more honed their skill is likely to be with the nuances of your scenario. Insurance or private pay: Why don't all therapists contract with insurance companies? The hard truth is that the rate of reimbursement by insurance companies is often out of synch with the actual cost of living, more so for larger urban areas. Aiming for a win-win, a middle ground that some therapists offer is a monthly receipt, called a superbill by insurance companies, which you can submit to a PPO-type insurance plan for partial reimbursement, and which essentially translates to a reduced fee. It's relevant to note that when using either in-network or out-of-network insurance benefits, health insurance companies require a diagnosis on a superbill in order to qualify for reimbursement. Use of insurance also means that your therapy records can be accessed by insurance personnel and auditors to determine whether to allow or disallow reimbursement based on criteria called "functional impairment" and "medical necessity." Alternately, you can submit a monthly receipt to a Health Savings Account or to a Flexible Spending Account in order to draw from the tax savings of those types of accounts, without exposure of therapy records. Video, telephone, or in person: It's personal preference whether to meet for sessions via video, phone, or in person. Research has indicated that efficacy is consistent across modalities. Age: With age comes experience, perspective, wisdom. Gender: If there is a history of hurt or trauma in relationship with someone of a particular gender, working with a therapist of that same gender may offer the opportunity for a "corrective emotional experience." Alternately, it may feel safer in connection with a therapist of a different gender. Culture: You may feel a preference to work within your native culture, offering a sense of familiarity; alternately, you may seek additional points of view in working with a therapist of another culture. Initial inquiry: Therapists who offer a free initial inquiry call give you an opportunity to ask questions to get a feel for fit. Optimally, a therapist will ask you about your goals in the initial call. Discussing your goals can bring to light whether the therapist you're interviewing has experience or specialization with your areas of concern; goals also serve as a compass to guide the process of therapy. If the initial call feels comfortable, or if you'd like a further feel for fit, scheduling a first session can offer experiential perspective on compatibility. As with any new relationship, developing a felt sense of comfort is a process that takes some time. Therapist self-care integrity: If you'd like your therapist to walk the talk, and engage therapy "with" you rather that "at" you, do feel free to ask what a prospective therapist's own self-care practice looks like. A therapist actively engaging their own growth will not be taken aback by this question. Ultimately, a good-fit therapeutic relationship will feel spacious enough to allow you to bring all facets of yourself to the relationship without feeling judged, and will also hold space for your as-needed feedback to your therapist, without being received with defensiveness.