Not nice, but I giggled when I read about your commute. You must be pretty frustrated to do "sign language" to other drivers.

I know I'm that frustrated when I start making up songs (songs not fit for public singing) about the driving habits of people pulling bad stunts in my proximity.

When you figure out how to be calm in those instances, please tell me, will you?

Hi 51percent, The list I ended up with were the male therapists that take my insurance. Got the list from my insurance company. Sadly though I specified therapists who work with adults some of them are child psychologists.So I started at the A's and began" google-ing". I managed to successfully weed out the ones who work with kids and only do testing and "life coaching" . I have started making phone calls but the few that have called back aren't seeing new clients. But...you are absolutely right...we all deserve to find the one that meets our needs.

guayaba, I make up those songs too! Sometimes I do the Mister Rogers voice ..."can you say d*****bag?" I have a potty mouth.

Yes, the superimposed calm voice is necessary. The songs (if you could ignore the words) are usually pretty relaxed sounding. Too bad the feeling doesn't follow; I usually feel like I'm going to pop when I do that.

I don't mean to step on any toes here, but as the years went by and I developed my own criteria for choosing a new therapist when I moved to a new town for my job, something else made my list. You mentioned weeding out "life coaches" and so forth. Just speaking for myself, I got to where it also helped me to weed out therapists whose training was at the M.S.W. level.

Don't mean to upset anyone who's really attached to their M.S.W. therapist, nor to say they aren't qualified. Just that I've got 3 varieties of trauma in my history, and while I found M.S.W.'s to be great with the first two, sexual and domestic, in my own experience alone I found them in particular to be not as prepared in the third area, combat trauma. So I began looking for therapists who also had VA experience. It was tough, but I found one, and finally got help in that area, too.

Your situation is undoubtedly not like that, but whatever it is, you might be able to narrow it done in your own way along similar lines, but for your particular needs. Good luck. It's a bear dealing with health care in the USA what with insurance bureaucracy and all. It's enough to make a saint want to flip the world the bird once or twice.

I worked with a LCSW years ago that was fantastic but I did restrict my search to psychologists this time. Years ago there was a question if I might be bipolar and well I want to know if I am or not and i also want to be sure who ever I end up with has experience. There are a plethora of bright, young shiney new grads in the area and i am sure they are good but for myself i want someone with a few years on them :-)

Getting a new therapy net to functional support levels is about 1,000 times more painful than breaking in new work boots. For me, anyway. The acronym criteria doesn't work at all for me. Whatever the brand name, it is the fit which makes the diff.

While you sort through that gnarly list of candidates, vent away here. Sometimes it even helps.

One of my latest traffic diddies is:

Let the zoomerator zoom on by
Cause faster is better for getting 'em gone

True Arfie...the most important things are fit and effective.