Are you thinking of looking for a therapist? With the corona pandemic and the social and economic problems it is causing, this is an especially good time to get started. This episode looks at the types of therapy and tactics and resources you can use as you begin to find a therapist. Good luck!
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Listen to Episode #15 here
How To Find A Therapist
This episode was prompted by someone who read episode one where I talked about how singles need a team and one of those team members could include a therapist, those who had never seen a therapist before and wanted to know how to find one. Now, with the pandemic and full effect and all the problems its causing with regard to social isolation and the economy, it’s a good time to answer this question. To do so, I spoke to Dr. Brian Martis who’s given this question a lot of thought. We cover all the basics, but we were a little rushed because both of us had appointments we had to get to. However, I suspect that I will return to this topic again which is incredibly important but not easy to navigate. I hope you enjoy the episode.
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My guest is Dr. Brian Martis. He is a psychiatrist who works at the VA San Diego Healthcare System and UCSD Department of Psychiatry. He’s been a psychiatrist for over twenty years and his clinical and research interests are in the area of trauma, stress and anxiety disorders. He’s also committed to helping people find the help they want and need both by reducing stigma, as well as helping navigate the often confusing maze of the healthcare system. Because he’s an overachiever, Brian is a student in my MBA course at the Rady School at the University of California-San Diego. We’re doing this interview after class ended. Welcome, Brian.
Thank you so much, Pete.
Let me tell you a little story about how we got here and then I’m going to turn things over to you. Three things happened to cause me to do this. The first one is Solo guest Darwyn Metzger and I was talking about how we need to find a therapist. He has some personal things and he wants to find a therapist who’s a good fit for him. He lives in Los Angeles. I’ve just moved to Los Angeles and I’ve had to “give up” my therapist back in Boulder, Colorado. My personal belief is we can still do calls and so on, but it’s much better to be in person. I have a very tall order because I have a fantastic therapist and this is top of mind because, in episode one, I talked about the value of building a team as a solo and how a therapist can be an essential member of that team. The second thing is after that, I received an email from a young man who I never met before who had stumbled onto the blog and heard it.
He wrote to me and he said, “I’m 33, male, single and sometimes want to talk to someone. I’m considering finding a therapist, but I’ve never been to therapy and never sought out a therapist before. How do I find one?” The third reason is that after our first class, we are classes interrupted by lunch and we sat down and had a conversation and you had brought up this topic over this new-ish interview method. We started talking about how to choose a therapist. You talked a little bit about your own experiences and we both agreed that it’s not easy and there aren’t good resources. Brian, no pressure but before that, we have to be careful a bit because you are a doctor, you’re dispensing advice, but this is not medical advice.
If I may, I wanted to say two things. One is that I’m sharing information so that people can use that information to make better decisions and achieve their goals. The other is that I do work for two organizations that you mentioned. My participation here is in my personal capacity. In terms of the legalese, I have to say these are my personal opinions and not those of my employer’s.
As people say on Twitter, retweets are not endorsements. Tweets are my own. This is your advice as an experienced person, but not from the VA or UCSD, but we know you’re legit because these places hire you and that’s great. We’ve set the stage. I mentioned to a friend that I was going to be doing this and he said, “That’s important,” and I agree. Whether you’re solo or not, there are a lot of people who in the same way they could use a physical therapist when they have physical pain. I wouldn’t call them mental therapists, but a therapist when they’re having, whether it be emotional, psychological or any issues in their life. Let’s step back first and talk about different types of therapy. It seems to me that it would matter who you’re choosing depending on what they specialize in, what problems they focus on. Tell the world. What’s the story?
I wanted to say two things. One is I want to thank you for doing this. This is an extremely important topic and it sometimes is the difference between life and death for some people. I almost daily have family, friends and colleagues call me about what do I do next. There are two issues that stopped them in their tracks. One is the stigma of are people going to think I’m crazy and there’s something wrong with me. Number two is even if a person doesn’t think that way, they don’t know what to do next. This is a complete maze and I feel very strongly about this and want to share information that no longer is the case. That’s why I want to thank you.
I have to tell you, when I got that email from that guy, I was overwhelmed by it. I agree with you. There’s so much stigma and also for young men, it is especially so. This is a group of people who have major problems that they can get help from.
I spent sleepless nights preparing for this. I was trying to find a simple way to say what is therapy and my colleague Sonya Norman gave me this nice thing that she got from the web. I’d love to give credit to where I found it. I like the explanation. When you seek therapy, you’re doing one of these things. You’re seeking clarity in some areas of your life. You’re wanting to work through complex emotions. You’re working through a traumatic experience. You are challenging negative thinking patterns. You are learning new techniques to cope with difficult situations and you’re focused on personal growth. It could be one of these, it could be all of these. This is important because whenever I ask somebody to consider a therapist, the first thing they tell me often is, “I’m not crazy.” This is a good paradigm, a reframe for this is what it is. The other thing that another great colleague of mine, Abigail Angkaw told me is one way to present this is, what are your life goals and what are your functional goals? What if you could get professional help to achieve your functional goals? That would make sense. We do that for financial advice.
I had Money Amy previously on how to get financial freedom.
If you want to run the marathon, you get a personal trainer. It’s important to pause and think why then do we stop when somebody says, “Get a therapist?” The reasons for this go beyond this show, but it’s something I want to challenge people with, these examples.
Why stop short if we’re willing to hire someone for everything else? We hire someone to help us lose weight. Before you get into the different types of therapy, this is neat because this gentleman who emailed me, one of the things that he said was that he was surprised that I sometimes go and see my therapist when things are going well. The reason is he thinks about therapy is helping you cope with complex emotions or helping with trauma. Going to a therapist for personal growth can happen whether you’re struggling or not. You might even be in a better position to grow when you’re not struggling.
Thank you for bringing that up. When you say, “I’m going to therapy,” the first thing somebody will say is, “Is everything okay? Are you all right? Do you need any help?” We need to stand that archaic paradigm on its head. Would you run a marathon if you didn’t train for several years? You wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t it be the same for your mental health? Arguably it’s far more important than your physical health because it’s intimately connected to it.
[bctt tweet=”For us, human beings, uncertainty and social stress are the most stressful things.” via=”no”]
I’ve been working through principles for solo and living a remarkable life and one of them is this idea that you’re never going to be finished or you’re never going to be like, “I’m done.” We’re constantly going to be working on new things, trying new things. The moment you feel complete will be a moment where you go, “There’s more to do.”
There’s no such thing as you’re done. I learned in my operations class about Kaizen, which is the Japanese Toyota model of continuous growth and improvement.
I’m sure our readers and I will recognize some of these types of therapies and therapists and orientation, but can you give us like a quick primer on that?
I’ve categorized therapy and therapists in my way, so don’t look for a textbook that says this. Part of it is true if you look at some categorizations. That would make sense. Part of it is a functional way to understand these things. There are three ways I want to make you think about this. One is therapy when you are not in distress or distress. You mentioned the growth part, so that would be a not in distress kind. You feel some dissonance, you feel some aspiration and you want to be in a therapy, which is either an insight-oriented therapy or a performance-enhancing and it borders on coaching.
I feel like life coaching has grown in prominence. It feels less stigmatized and it feels a little more focused on achievement.
Technically, we don’t necessarily call it therapy in my field. The common borders unfold into counseling, coaching and that realm. There’s when you are in distress and that’s if it’s acute, then we call it crisis intervention. If it’s serious enough that you are so distressed or it’s disrupting your function and those are the two key things. One is you’re so distressed that it’s impairing the quality of life. The other is that is interfering with your functioning where there’s personal functioning, relationship functioning or work function. That’s the threshold for us to call it a clinical condition and you might have heard the term a clinical disorder. The first kind of therapy, you’d go to a counselor or you would go to a coach. You would even go to somebody who’s not a counselor or coach. One example of that is pastoral counseling or a mentor. That’s the first group. In the second group, you would go to a therapist and you’re distressed. You would go to say a marital and family therapist or to a social worker or to a psychologist. Sometimes you would even go to a psychiatrist.
What I sense with this a little bit is, the second group, they can help you if you’re not distressed. They can serve both purposes.
Most people don’t because it’s our archaic medical model, which is it’s only when you get some things wrong. For the most part, when something’s wrong that is when you go to the clinic or the doctor. With one exception, which is your annual physical that you reluctantly go to.
My therapist, I pay out of pocket and so he’ll see me for anything because there’s no insurance that steps in and goes, “He’s too healthy right now.”
That’s part two of our interview because that’s a whole new issue. It’s a very important issue, which means if you want to do therapy, who’s going to pay for it? That’s a whole new discussion.
It’s a great luxury I recognize that I have. When I was a younger man, I had to go to the school counseling center because that’s all I could afford.
Broadly, we think of three broad bins, if you will. One is an insight-oriented or psychodynamic therapy. This is a modern version of the psychoanalytical therapist. People know it.
The person laying on the couch?
Yes, except they were not laying on the couch. The basis for that is to develop a relationship between the patient and the therapist where they examined that relationship in the context of their past relationships. That’s how they worked through some of the difficulties they’re having. I’m sure you’ve heard enough of the jokes about your childhood and your mom. That came from the psychoanalytical field but there are some distilled versions of that, which are relationships and how you carry them with you and how you explore them. That’s called insight-oriented therapy or psychodynamic psychotherapy. The second bin, which is probably most people have heard and know by now is called cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy involves talking about thoughts, feelings and behaviors without going into your relationship with your mom or your relationship with your dad. It still talks about your experience in the form of a schema, but those kinds of relationships are less explored. What you’re exploring is your thinking, your feelings and your behaviors and how they’re related.
When I was a PhD student, I was in a research psychology program. In the first year, you share all your classes with the clinical and counseling psych students as well as the industrial organizational students, the cognitive students, etc. I remember I had a buddy who pretty early on, he was starting this as part of his internships with people and so on. He was practicing CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I got to chuckle out of it. He would experiment with these outrageous things. Let’s suppose someone were easily embarrassed. They felt like people were judging them. He would give them tasks in which they would put themselves in what would be an embarrassing situation and then he would have them closely monitor how they would be treated. We’d have them stain their shirt. My favorite was to go into a bathroom and sit in the stall and make loud grunting noises and then come out. The idea was no one made fun of him, laughed at him, and pointed at him and all that stuff.
I’m glad you brought that up. That’s the classic exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy that we give for social anxiety disorder. What you described to me is a social anxiety situation where people have a fear of scrutiny. Not everybody who does have that transiently has a disorder. For example, most of us have all the symptoms when we are asked to stand up in front of the class unannounced to give a speech. In fact, there’s a test called the Trier social stress test, which people would walk into a room, they’re given a topic and they were five people sitting in white coats and they do not give you any cue whatsoever if you’re saying something. That’s fine. That is known to be one of the most stressful conditions for human beings. It spikes your cortisol. It’s an important point, which means that for us human beings, uncertainty, and social stress are the most stressful things.
The treatment is first of all, analyzing the behaviors and making a hierarchy. You’ll pick the lowest, the thing that makes you the least anxious first and then you will master it. It’s not necessarily the first session, but you first make a list of these behaviors. You will prioritize them and then you will rank them by how distressed you are. We call that subjective units of distress. What would be your zero versus what would be your 100? Sitting in the bathroom would potentially be 100 or standing up and giving a speech and a zero would be being by yourself doing nothing or are at home. There’s everything in between. You pick those things and, in each session, you expose the person to it and there’s a brain science basis for this. There’s a common sense science which is as you expose yourself to this integrated way in a safe situation, you get habituated to it and desensitized to it.
My understanding is cognitive behavioral therapy works. What’s the third?
The third is known as the third wave of therapist, which is mindfulness-based therapies and mindfulness-based stress reduction. Many people have heard various versions of this. Some of it is out in the public in terms of mindfulness behaviors. There are actually therapies that are built around mindfulness. It’s called MBCT, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy or Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. These therapies incorporate the mindfulness component into the cognitive behavioral session.
I had this experience many years ago where I started to meditate and I was doing a particular form of meditation called Loving-Kindness meditation. What was striking about it was, first of all, it’s not easy to do to practice this in the same way that yoga is not easy to do. It becomes easier as you do more of it, but it worked. It had this incredible pervasive effect in my world where I became a less angry driver, for example. I never thought that I could get that as part of traditional therapy.
It’s growing because people have realized that our existing armamentarium, if you will, is woefully inadequate for the wide ranges of experiences that we have and the light variation of preferences that we have. Mindfulness, one of the things that I like about it is first of all, it draws from Eastern philosophies and an important component of it is acceptance. There’s a version of that in CBT called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT therapy.
This all sounds a bit complicated to me and promising. Given that many of these works especially, how do you go about finding a therapist?
That’s the million-dollar question. It’s what brought us here together. Before I answer that question, I’ll share with you what I call, how do you find resources? We can get to when you think you want therapy but let’s now assume that you want to explore.
This is for people who say, “I think my life will be better.”
The first thing is you could look on the interweb. As you know, there’s so much out there and it’s so confusing.
What do you search for and so on?
I’ll give you three things. One is look at some academic sites. If you’re in San Diego, you look up the UC San Diego site. Look at the academic sites and look at this Department of Psychiatry or Department of Psychology and look for resources.
[bctt tweet=”You should feel empowered to ask questions because it’s your life.” via=”no”]
These are vetted by experts.
These will usually be in the clinical realm. The other is professional organizations like the American Psychological Association and American Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy Association. There’s one particular website, which my colleague recommended to me, which is called Psychology Today.
I used to blog for Psychology Today.
You’d probably be able to speak about it better than I do, but it gives the information, it allows you to search for different kinds of therapists closer to your area or your zip code. I don’t necessarily know how they are vetted and they’re on their website, however, it gives you a place to start. It gives you at least some names. Sometimes those names may be part of your insurance list. Remember we were talking about how do you pay for these things? The last group is what I call patient advocacy groups. For clinical conditions, there are some very strong, let me say outstanding patient advocacy groups like NAMI and ADAA, which is the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
What was the first one?
NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It’s one of the older organizations. There’s the IOCDF. This is for people with obsessive compulsive disorder. Let’s get to the how do you find the therapist. Let’s say you know what you want and let’s say which of the bins we talked about. The insight, psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral or the mindfulness thing.
My quick observation about that is I know what I like. I’ve already been to therapy, so I know this, but I don’t like this psychodynamic stuff that much. I don’t want to sit and revisit my childhood a whole bunch of times. I want to work through practical kinds of feeling, thought and behavioral changes in my life that can make myself better. I have a sense of that, but for some people they may have to try this out and see where does one work or fit.
That is true for even if you knew what you wanted because you would still have to try out the person that you’re going to visit.
There’s a fit in terms of orientation and there’s a fit in terms of personality.
Even if you knew what you wanted, there would be an exploratory period. If you don’t what know what you want, then it takes a little longer. The way to maybe fast track that is ask family and friends, ask your primary care doctor, ask employee assistance and those kinds of things. I’m not saying you need to do what they say. I’m saying asking these people gives you some options.
It’s like old school word of mouth. It’s like when you’re looking for a mechanic, you ask your friends.
This is for a place to start. I’m not saying that’s the only thing you need to do. You can cross-check that with the academic sites or the professional organizations. The other way is to actually pick three and visit them and talk. It’s not the most fun thing to do. It’s work. When you do that once or twice and you get a sense of who this person is, what their approach is and what they have in store for you, it gives you a sense of, “I like the first person better.” Feel empowered to explore, to shop and to ask questions.
I want to ask you about this. I have this particular bias, which is I’d like an older therapist. I recognize that maybe a younger therapist has better training or more up-to-date training than someone. I like someone who has some experience in life. They’ve seen lots of different people. Because I’m getting a little older, I like that. I don’t have a preference about gender. I’ve had great male and great female therapists. My problems don’t require something like that. Does the demographics of the therapist matter or should they?
That is a fantastic question because I have arguments with my dad quite often about the doctors that I have recommended for him. Let me say broadly, all of that is fine, which means if you feel more comfortable with a woman or a man or younger or an older or somebody in the universe, those are fine things. Ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You have to sit there and ascertain for yourself a few things and we’ll talk about those few things. Those preferences are fine. It’s important to not conflate feeling good with the competence of the therapist.
That’s good because a good therapist is going to make you feel uncomfortable.
This is a chronic issue that I deal with where people come to me and when I sit them down and go through, “Did you do this?” I often realize it’s because the therapist is very competent but therapy is hard work.
It’s like if you went to a physical therapist and it was a pleasurable, easy massage versus exactly the pain that goes with rehabilitation.
You still need to ask the therapist in the first session you want to know a little bit about them.
Now we’re transitioning from you’ve identified people, set up an appointment. You go into their office and it sounds like you’re saying you should take a little bit of control.
I’m saying that you should feel empowered to ask questions because it’s your life. If you feel any hesitation, think about the other situations in your life. Would you not ask your mechanic questions when he says your bill is $1,000? Would you not ask your financial advisor why is he recommending this versus that? This is no different. I would say it’s more important. A word of caution, when you go on some of these websites, the APA web website or other websites, they have these series of questions. I’ve always wondered about that because I would be very uncomfortable saying where did you go to school and what grade did you get in school? Those are guidelines. You can ask the same questions in a much more inquisitive, kinder and productive way. For example, you could say, “Would you mind telling me a little bit about yourself in approach the patients?” “I told you what I’ve been struggling with, do you have a lot of other people like me?” Even the words matter.
If I say what experience you have, you’re going to be defensive. If I say there are lots of people like me that you worked with and that would give you the same answer or a better answer. The other is, what is the framework for the therapy? What are you going to do first? What are you going to do next? I want to know if I’m meeting with you every day. Am I meeting every week? How long am I meeting? What are we going to do in each session? That will very quickly give you a sense of is this person doing what they said they were doing on their website. We often see people saying that they do certain things, but that’s not exactly what they do. I’m not criticizing anybody. I’m saying if you’re looking for a certain thing, you want to get that approach.
In a previous episode, I spoke to my barber. I feel like this is a little bit like the same process. You go to the barber, you have an open mind, but you pay attention to how he or she approaches the way they cut your hair, they listen to you. How do you feel in the chair? Do they push you a little bit to try some new things? You might not return, you might find someone else. You’re looking to build a relationship.
It’s unfortunate because we have modeled our medical system that way. You always think of, “I’m going to my doctor,” and then you think about going to see your psychiatrist as not your doctor. You think of it as something not medical. That’s a dichotomy that’s artificially created. Sometimes it hurts us to think that way. Primarily with the stigma or the other is not understanding that your brain and your brain is part of your body and they’re intimately related, more intimately than what most people know.
In terms of getting to know this person, I assume you should be upfront. You say, “I’m going to be meeting with a few people.” It’s okay for them to know this just so they know what the expectations are. You’re assessing fit, your feelings and knowing that it shouldn’t be about feeling good. Supposed you decide to go with someone else, do you tell them?
It depends on the context. If you’ve already told them upfront and maybe you don’t show up again, they’ll probably know.
It’s like a first date. You don’t have to tell the person you’re asking them out again.
[bctt tweet=”Good therapy is life-saving and life-changing.” via=”no”]
It all depends on your values. I would agree with that. There’s a value in that. You feel good about yourself. You’ve been upfront, you’ve done your thing, but it’s not absolutely necessary because they have enough people. You don’t have to worry about them. Let’s put it that way.
You’ve done this, then what?
Let’s say you started and you told this story and they listened to your story and they said, “I want to meet with you several times to understand the situation better. At the end of those, let’s say, three times, I’m going to give you a sense of what I think, my professional opinion and what we can do.” We want a diagnosis if you will. As we know, there’s not always a diagnosis when you’re not looking for a diagnosis, if you’re talking personal growth. For diagnosis, you can substitute the person’s impression and that’s number one. Number two is what is the plan of action and/or a treatment plan?
It should be articulated.
Many times, people come to me and they’ll say, “I’ve been doing this therapy,” and I’ll say, “Walk me through that.” Almost six months to one year later, they say, “I don’t know what my diagnosis is.” I’m like, “What are you doing in your session?” Not that labels aren’t important, but it tells me what about what the communication has been. You want to feel heard, but you want the person to tell you what they think and what the plan is. Going back to your car, if you took it to the mechanic and he listened to you and he listened to the car and he mumbled some things, which they normally do and they gave you $500 bill. You come back in a week and did the same thing, you’d be like, “I need to know what’s going on with my car.” The third thing is a good therapist would welcome questions. When you ask questions, they would welcome them and give you a reasonable response and not get irritated or flustered or like, “Why are you asking these questions?” You want to feel that they are partnering with you. This is not a friendship. This is a partnership. You should feel partnered with.
Suppose you don’t and you decide after 3 or 10 or 20 sessions that you want to move on, I suspect that now you have more information about what you’re looking for in the next therapist. Is there anything special about terminating that relationship?
We go back to, do you want to bring that up and discuss that or do you want to not show up? Do you want to say that through email? It’s a personal style. It’s always good to be able to sit there and say, “I’ve gained a lot from the sessions. Now, I want to look for something different.” It makes people feel their own sense of agency and it empowers them. It’s worthwhile, but I wouldn’t beat anybody senseless in terms of, “You didn’t do that?” Not at all. Ultimately, you want to take care of yourself and it’s okay.
Do you have a couple of parting thoughts?
Before the parting thoughts, can I say that it’s important that when you’re doing your therapy, how do you know it’s working? You should be talking about your goals. You should be working towards your goals. There should be some outcome measures. There’s some way to measure that you’re moving towards your goal.
This is important because that a lot of people, especially people who’ve never been to therapy before, they think of the old school sitting on the couch where you talk and the person writes down notes. What you’re describing is a much more collaborative, “This is what I see. This is what we should do. How’s it going? Let’s reassess and so on.”
What I’m saying right now is very much along the lines of the CBT approach. The other two can also be active like this but in a slightly different way. I wanted to make sure that people know that if you feel that you are working towards your goals and you’re able to measure those goals, then you know something is going well. Don’t feel like things are great because, “Once a week I get to go there. I feel good because they listen to me. I feel I have a place to vent.” Those are the metrics.
One thing that is important to note is that these changes may not happen overnight. It may take weeks or months. It may take some time.
Remember how long it took you to get where you are. If it took you years to get where you are, it’s unrealistic in three sessions. That being said, I’m not necessarily advocating years of therapy for everybody. It’s important to be patient. I always use the marathon analogy for this. Think about it as a marathon. You’re running one mile, you’re running two miles, you’re running three miles. One day you will run 26 with pain. One day you run 26 miles without pain. Remember that. Number two is people always think that therapy should make them feel good. Initially, you’re not necessarily going to feel good. It’s going to be a little bit more turmoil because you are now facing things that you may not have faced. Again, the marathon analogy. Your body hurts. You can’t get out of bed and that kind of stuff. Eventually when you stick with it, then you will see the benefits of that because you’re strengthening yourself.
Do you have some parting pearls of wisdom?
Just three things and they’re random but I felt it was important to share with our readers. One is of hope, which is therapy works. Good therapy is life-saving and life-changing. Number two is you are amazing and you should feel empowered to take your life in your hands and ask people questions. Do not compromise. I’m talking to our readers, as well as you, Pete.
These are people who are pursuing a remarkable life.
You’re amazing. You deserve the best. You should feel empowered to ask the questions and receive the answers that you seek. Number three is this is particularly for people who may be thinking, “Should I do therapy? Should I not?” Think about it as an investment. Think about it as what functional goals I want to achieve and then approach it from that point of view. The reason I’m saying that is because of the whole stigma of should I get therapy or not?
It’s why I talk about it. It’s why I talk about it to my friends. It’s why I’ve been willing to talk about it with strangers. I’m living a good life. I’m proud of the life that I built. It’s been a lot of hard work and so on. I feel like doing that thing, seeing therapists, some have been completely life-changing and some have been so-so, but on balance, it has been completely worth the time, the effort, the money and you’re right, the discomfort in order to pursue that. I agree with you. You have to feel like you’re worth it in order to do that and a little healthy dose of patience. Dr. Martis, I had no doubt that this was going to be useful. I feel like this will be a great resource for people and I’m going to make sure that you and I collaborate to get all of these things in the exhibits that people can find on my website.
Thank you again, Pete. I don’t think you understand how important this is. Not that you don’t understand how important this is, but I don’t think that you understand the impact you are going to make with sharing information like this with people. Like I said, it’s life-saving.
There is not a good place to do it. I hope for the readers, I’d like to hear from you. Has this been helpful? I have a feeling I might be revisiting this at different times.
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.
Thank you, Brian. You’re a gem. Cheers.
Important Links
- Episode one – Introducing Solo: The Single Person’s Guide To A Remarkable Life
- Dr. Brian Martis
- Darwyn Metzger – Previous episode
- Money Amy – Previous episode
- Psychology Today
- NAMI
- ADAA
- IOCDF
- Previous episode – Dude, Get a Haircut
- https://Profiles.ucsd.edu/brian.martis
- https://www.APA.org/topics/therapy/
- https://www.Psychiatry.org/patients-families/psychotherapy
- https://www.SAMHSA.gov/find-treatment
- https://www.APA.org/helpcenter/choose-therapist
- https://www.PsychologyToday.com/us
- https://NAMI.org/learn-more/treatment/psychotherapy
- https://Members.ADAA.org/page/FATMain
- https://IOCDF.org/ocd-finding-help/how-to-find-the-right-therapist/
About Dr. Brian Martis
Brian Martis is a psychiatrist who works at the VA San Diego Healthcare System and UCSD Department of Psychiatry. He has been a psychiatrist for over 20 years and his clinical and research interests lie in the areas of trauma, stress and anxiety disorders. He is also committed to helping people find the help they want/need, both by reducing stigma as well as helping navigate the often confusing maze of the healthcare system.
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