What to do when your mental health counselling becomes expensive?

It's not out of the ordinary when you require help with your mental health- everyone's been there. Our times doesn't get hard, sometimes our life doesn't have to be hard enough for us to go through anything. That's exactly why many health care, mental health professionals as well as even your own closest friends, fmaily or colleagues request to make things aware about getting help with mental health. 

But what happens when we get to this part of the question: finances. It's likely that many you have even discovered with people around you saying-

"Yaar, I cannot afford it." And then continueing to spend thousands of ruppees on a recent myntra sales because new year was just around the corner & myntra puts out their last year's products to get rid of.

What if I tell you that you actually can make it work? Its not impossible, it depends on where you're prioritising on. To this, I can list you a few things on actually making it affordable. 

1. Research & seek help- Alright, now you're ready to get help, what is your budget? Analyse how much you can actually afford keep it from 100-200 the cheapest that you can get to & now actually go online & seek help regarding how much you can afford. There are therapists that actually consult you for free in the first session, then you may have to pay some amount of fee for the next session onwards. To this you can seek for help within your locality of mental health counselors who may be able to help you out. By this way, you can be able to get help within your budge

2. Seek help online instead of offline- Most times the charging fee with therapists depends on the rent they're paying including their qualifications also matter along with which part of the world or country you're from. Instead of having to spend money on your fuel, transportation charges as well as having to go face-to-face counselling. Get help online. There are specifically therapists who work online- as long as you have the required technological help regarding good wifi, either a laptop, a pc or even a mobile phone would do. Whichever software you're comfortable with such as zoom, skype, or facetiming your therapist would be great. This immediatlly takes away any extra charges that you may have to pay. 

3. Speak with your therapaist regarding this issue- What if you're already in the progress of seeking help? But no longer can afford it. Please address your financial constraint to your therapist as this is extremeley important as they should know what is making your uncomfortable about it. THey could help you out in reducing their fee or if thats not possible they would definitely be able to refer you to a cheaper therapist they may know of. Therapitst are constantly reffering patients/clients to each other regarding several issues or problems that they may come across, so its not all that difficult to get together with another therapist in contact. Your insurance may be also another thing to focus on.

4. Keep aside a budget of funding just for your therapy- It's normal to often forget about having to think about keeping some amount of money because we get too involved & burried under materialism. Especially at times where we live we have to often get absorbed into the most useless materilistic things to buy for our instant gratification. You actually can keep side some amount of your session money jsut for a montly basis. This would also help you to get better with financing your life aside.

5. Lesser sessions- Once you talk to your therapist about your financial constraint another solution can be to keep as less sessions as possible. You can have talk to your professional help about how your can keep it on a monthly basis or a weekly basis so you can at the same time be able to work on yourself without having the professional help that often. This will also give you the liability of self-care as an adult to look after to be able to care for yourself when things get hard. 

Hope these points help you out when seeking help if you cannot afford it. Remember its not about affording, your therapist will always be able to help you out in order to not make you uncomfortable about your money problem. There are illegal counselors out there who do not have enough educational qualification to actually start counselling for, always be aware of frauds.