If you’re looking for affordable marriage counseling, know this. You get what you pay for. The “cheapest” marriage counselor is not going to be the best marriage counselor, most likely. However, there is room to go after high quality marriage counseling and work to make it as affordable as possible.
Need more inspiration?
Read the blog post How to make sure marriage counseling will work for you
Here are some suggestions for high quality yet affordable marriage counseling.
1. Ask your marriage counselor if they offer an intensive program– which will most likely provide your marriage with a “breakthrough” or “intervention”, stopping your marriage from continuing to spiral downhill. Often times these 2 or 3 day intensive programs, while costing a lot at first, eliminate the need for as many follow up sessions, so in the end, they may be more affordable for you. Our 2 day marriage therapy intensive is expensive up front but is like 12 hours of marriage counseling all in one shot!
2. Does the marriage counselor that you are looking into using have a book that they’ve written? Or material that you can listen to and purchase for a fraction of the cost of repeat therapy sessions? That is a great way to begin injecting your marriage with positive energy and concrete actions to improve the marriage, and it’s really affordable. In our marriage counseling practice, we offer an online DIY program called Marriage School that is designed for the Do-it-yourselfers out there that wish to try marriage counseling on their own at first.
3. Is the marriage counselor that you are in contact with going to be offering any public speaking engagements or seminars that are open to the public for free or even for a small fee? That might be a great way to become acquainted with the therapist and to understand more about their approach to marriage counseling. Definitely affordable too!
4. Sometimes, a therapist recommends that you come to marriage counseling for a pre-prescribed amount of time in order for maximum results. In our practice for instance, we ask that couples commit to a 2 day marriage intensive in order to achieve the BEST results.
After that, a couple may “graduate”, which happens very often, or if they desire follow-up sessions, they can certainly decide to do that.
If you want the best results and you would like to commit to a program, you may want to ask the therapist if they will offer you a discount should you decide to pay up-front.
Again, this is very unique to the way a marriage counselor runs their practice.
Some may want you to come weekly for an open-ended amount of time and don’t necessarily have a time frame in mind for planning out your progress.
It never hurts to ask though, especially when you want the best help and want it to also be affordable!
5. Check with your insurance policy about covering mental health. Many people have a policy that requires the therapist to submit a treatment plan to their health insurance provider (or 3rd party mental health provider such as Magellan Behavioral Health). It’s easy to get this treatment plan form online and your therapist can easily fill out this one page form and then fax it for approval.
You will hopefully then be approved for a number of sessions- (enough to make a difference when seeing a good marriage therapist!) and what you’ll do is pay the therapist after your appointment, and then you’ll take the receipt for the marriage counseling session and mail it to your insurance claims office.
You are likely to get reimbursed for your session up to 80% of what the insurance company’s “standard” cost for a therapy session. Their cost probably will be less than what the marriage counselor charges, and this reimbursement definitely makes the sessions more affordable.
We can help you make your marriage counseling more affordable depending on your needs. It would be great for you to start out by enrolling in Marriage School, which is our self guided online marriage counseling program. It’s the most affordable way to get help for your marriage that actually works without the risk of going to marriage counseling that may not work or make things worse!
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