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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'll play...out of network psychologist, additional training after, practice out of my home (virtual & in person), a bit under $200 per hour, patients range from those who started last month to my longest at 13 years, network of dc colleagues, in practice about 15 years.

1. It took many years to get here. Top of the line training, supervision and my own long (expensive) but deep psychotherapy. I estimate training and my  therapy at over 500 k during my lifetime. Since age 22 when I was a psych major and popped into therapy sporadically to ongoing, deep treatment into my midlife. 
2. You can take someone only as far as you yourself have gone. No shortcuts. You can't ask patients to do work you yourself have not done. They sense if you walk the walk and have the depth. That comes over time with experience and expensive training and supervision. 
2. People who pay out of pocket expect a lot and rightly so.  Deliver something of deep value, something meaningful to them, something helpful or they will go. Understandably. And that differs for each person and you have to work intellectually and emotionally to truly understand who they are and what they are saying on multiple levels. Then you must decide how to intervene, your technique, which takes years to explore and never ends. But the level of listening is active and at times, by the end of some days, exhausting.
3. It's demanding, gratifying, sometimes deeply sad, sometimes deeply enjoyable and everything in between, hour by hour, day by day, week by week. 
4. You learn to plunge the depths and love your patients and then you bear the goodbye. You work with loss, fear, pain,  suffering and existential dread. You do this with your own therapist too. You learn to bear pain and grief, personally and professionally. 
5. Whatever inner issue or family issue at play, you must show up for your patients. Which means keeping your personal life as stable as possible, to the best of your ability. Over years.

I love what I do, I'm grateful to have had this rewarding career and I hope I can continue to do it for several more years. But it was and is at times still a hard road and there are much, much easier ways to make money. [/quote]

You sound wonderful! And remind me of my own psychologist. FWIW I will only see psychologists (for trauma, family issues, and life generally) and I think their training is dramatically different than that of an LSW and it matters. Seems like there is so much need that LSWs can make money, too. [/quote]

What is different about the training between a psychologist and a licensed social worker? Why does it matter? [/quote]

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