I work in a pretty organized way. I'd first want to spend time assessing together what is going on that's contributing to your troubles. Once we have a good idea of what's going on, we can work on it better! That would be a major focus of the first handfull of sessions, including some writen inventories I'd ask you to do at home.

If you are having really painful feelings or problems right now (including depression or anxiety), I'd want to help you with specific actions and skills you can take right now to get some relief. (These skills and actions would probably mostly be drawn from DBT and CBT.) If you are interested in changing problematic life patterns that are long term (that maybe go back to childhood or adolescence and maybe come up as problems in relationships or your work life), I'll probably recommend that we use Schema Therapy in our work together. (Schema Therapy is a wonderful "integrative psychotherapy." It puts together several effective psychotherapies, including psychoanalytic object relations, CBT, DBT, Gestalt imagery work, and a focus on the positive power of our therapy relationship. Schema Therapy can be quite effective and might be a good fit especially if you've felt only relatively superficial relief from previous therapy.)

I work as part of Meridian Psychiatric Partners, a group practice with offices in Evanston and downtown Chicago. We can directly bill Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois PPO insurance and the Northwestern University Aetna CAPS student insurance. I am also a member of the NorthShore University HealthSystems Medical Group and can bill their BCBS HMO-Illinois plan. My non-insurance fee is $120 per therapy hour. I have sliding scale hours available. Even if we do not work with your insurance plan directly, we can assist with out-of-network reimbursement for most PPO plans.

Seeking psychotherapy is something that takes real courage and real need and can be of important benefit. I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on the efforts you are making. Let me know if I might be able to be of help.

Take care,

Curt Kearney