Where Did you Go to Find Your Therapist?

I am a very experienced clinical psychologist with a PhD from a very strong university. I have recently left an agency where I was pressured to do unethical things (for example: record things in the medical record that absolutely are too personal for that purpose and didn't need to be there). After trying to resolve the issue within the procedures of the organization, I left.

My dream since the age of 18 has been to be in independent private practice. See people in my office, keep other people out it. I would love to avoid insurance because they also get in the way of good care, but I have gotten onto panels with major insurance companies.

Here is my problem. I advertise in Psychology Today, I have a website, I am known in the community, and I get very few referrals. I have joined a site that offers therapy at low cost (40 to 70 per session). I advertise a sliding fee scale. I am on major therapy platforms.

I have heard this complaint from many other therapists. I know this will surprise many of you, but there seems to be a glut of psychotherapists.

It is important for me to understand the process by which clients seek therapists. I have decided to do other things with my career, things that are not therapy but pay the bills. This means giving up on a dream I started pursuing 40 years ago, at the age of 18. I have had internationally recognized teachers (Marsha Linehan for example) and worked as a professor training other therapists internationally. I have published influential research on mental health. But I have never been able to crack into what I have wanted to do all along: make my living by going to my own office, which I run ethically and an my own terms.

If any clients have any thing to offer by way of how you go about finding therapists, where you go, what you look for, what influences you, it would be most helpful. Don't worry about hurting my feelings BTW. I have a very thick skin. I grew up gay in Texas in a fundamentalist Christian family and heard twice on Sunday and Wednesday night how I was going to burn in hell for all eternity. Nothing you could say could top that!

Thank you to any one who writes!