Dear clients: Before you book that therapy session
Dear therapy seeker: I see you. I've been you. The search for a therapist can feel impossible, overwhelming — and in that vulnerability, the appeal of a platform that promises to do the hard work for you is completely understandable. With just a few taps on your phone, you can be matched, book a session, and begin. But in a marketplace that is expanding rapidly, with an ever-growing number of platforms and services through which therapists and clients can find one another, the question is no longer simply how to find the right person …
The Business of Healing
Large therapy platforms are, we know, businesses. They have investors, profit margins, and growth targets. They want to keep costs low, they compete on price and somewhere along the line, someone absorbs the cost - often the therapist.
Many of the largest and most heavily advertised therapy platforms pay their clinicians wages that I find difficult to reconcile. Rates that fall significantly below what a therapist might earn in private practice. Rates that don't account for the training, skill, understanding and experience that it takes to sit with another human being in their most vulnerable moments — and do that work responsibly and well.
Why This Might Matter For You
Therapy research has consistently pointed to the quality of the therapeutic relationship as one of the strongest predictors of positive outcomes. And a therapeutic relationship doesn't exist in a vacuum — it exists within conditions.
A therapist who feels secure, professionally valued, and able to hold a sustainable caseload is, I would argue, a therapist more able to show up for you with presence and consistency.
A therapist navigating burnout, platform-mandated client quotas, or the quiet strain of feeling undervalued — through no fault of their own — is working within conditions that will affect the very thing you're seeking.
I'm not suggesting that therapists working within these systems aren't doing meaningful, even extraordinary work. I don’t doubt that many are. But at what cost?
A Disconnect Worth Naming
There is, to my mind, great contradiction and shortsighted-ness in the way some of these platforms are operating. They undervalue therapists - the very people that keep their business going. They hollow out the conditions in which good therapy can happen - and in doing so, fundamentally misunderstand what therapy actually is. It is work that work demands energy, supervision, reflection, and rest. It demands that a therapist have enough breathing room in their practice to actually think about you between sessions.
When platforms don’t appropriately remunerate their therapists they force them to see more clients to survive. More clients means less space. Less space means less of everything that makes therapy work — the attunement, the curiosity, the capacity to sit with difficulty without rushing toward resolution.
Some Things Worth Considering
I know that not every platform operates this way. Some are genuinely thoughtful about how they treat their clinicians.
But these are the questions I'd invite you to hold as you embark on your search for a therapist:
Is the platform transparent about therapist compensation? If that information is hard to find, I think that's worth noticing.
Does the platform allow clinical autonomy? Are therapists free to work in the way their training and judgment guides them, or are session structures and caseloads decided from above?
What are therapists themselves saying? Clinician forums and candid reviews can offer a perspective that marketing materials won't.
Have you considered independent practice? The fee may feel higher — but it often reflects a therapist who has chosen that rate with intention, who manages their own caseload, and who isn't navigating the pressures of platform targets.
