Finding Care When Anxiety Won’t Wait | Episode 447

Your Therapist Just Left | Now What? | Episode 447

Losing a therapist is hard. Losing a therapist and a psychiatrist back-to-back can unravel your routines, spike anxiety, and make even a 20-minute drive feel like a wall. We open up about that cascade, why fit matters more than prestige, and how to rebuild a mental health team when systems are stretched thin and waitlists run long. Along the way, we unpack the lived difference between psychology, psychiatry, and therapy, and why a licensed clinical social worker might be the right partner for daily coping skills while a psychiatrist supports diagnosis and medication management.

This conversation gets practical fast: navigating calls to clinics that say no, asking about sliding scales, using cancellation lists, and weighing telehealth against driving anxiety. We talk about insurance realities, the national shortage of providers, and the very human cost of hearing “not accepting new patients” when you’ve finally found the courage to ask for help. Stigma shows up in money myths and quiet shame, so we name it and move through it with compassion.

Hope here is not fluffy. It looks like one more call, a first shower after a hard stretch, showing up for a school dance you couldn’t have handled years ago, and giving yourself credit for progress that won’t fit in a headline. Faith and prayer help some; others lean on routines and community. The core message stands: every life is worth living, and asking for help is an act of strength. If this resonates, subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find a path forward.

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Chapter Markers

0:00 Welcome And Global Mission

2:09 Call For Support And Reach Goals

2:09 Choosing Care After Therapist Retires

4:55 Psychology Vs Psychiatry Lived Differences

7:31 Distance, Driving Anxiety, And Access

9:51 Insurance, Costs, And Shortages

12:20 Finding A New Therapist And Hope

14:40 Stigma And The Strength To Ask

16:22 Small Steps, Faith, And Everyday Wins

27:03 Closing, Community, And Donations

#AnxietySupport #MentalHealthMatters #CopingWithAnxiety #TherapyOptions #MindfulnessTechniques #AnxietyReliefTips #FindingCare #MentalWellnessJourney #StressManagementStrategies #SelfHelpForAnxiety #SeekingHelpForMentalHealth #OvercomingPanicAttacks #EmotionalWellbeing #SupportForAnxietyDisorders #NavigatingMentalHealth #justiceforsurvivors #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram #truth #Jesusaire #VoiceForChange #HealingTogether #Episode447

Transcript

Welcome And Global Mission

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes 0:02

Hi everyone, it's Justin here, Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode. Whether you're watching, whether you're listening, whether you're here in the United States or across the world, thank you for joining us and making our TV show and podcast one of the most popular and hottest across the world. We couldn't do this without you. If you can give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, reach out to 25-year contacts in your phone, let them know about the voices for voices, TV show and podcast, and how we are helping people, one person at a time, one country at a time, one city at a time. Currently, we have helped and reached over uh people in over 100 countries and over 1,000 cities. With your help, we can help and reach people across 300 countries and over 3,000 cities on our way to help and reach 3 billion people plus over the course of my lifetime and beyond. We have big goals, but we have a lot of people to help. And thank you so much for being with us today. Over 445 episodes in our catalog. Uh, so please uh again give us a thumbs up, subscribe, follow, share, all that great stuff. It's free to two. Uh, and if you can reach out to 25 or 50 of your contacts in your phone, let them know about voices for voices. Uh, we are again one of the hottest uh TV show and podcasts across this beautiful world that we call on the planet Earth. Uh, one of the areas we want to talk about today is uh a little bit of the difference between uh psychology as a topic and a psychiatrist or a practicing nurse psychiatrist. Um and I it's been something that's been on my mind, uh, and so I'll I'll get started. Uh when one of my therapists um kind of abruptly decided to retire, I was left with a decision to make who to see to take that therapist's place. Uh and you know, to be quite upfront as we are, transparent, uh, authentic. Uh I I really didn't have a a soul a soul therapist. Uh I had and still have uh you know the psychiatrist side of things, which you know goes to the diagnosing, the helping, uh, if there's a need of medication management, uh, and and so that has been a constant since November 2017. Uh I was given a few different opportunities or a few different options on who I could see after my therapist abruptly retired. And as I was communicating with the office where I had been coming to uh to my visits with my therapist, as I was communicating with them, they were giving me different options of individuals and the different backgrounds, and some of it came down to distance of well, you could see this person, but you have to drive an extra 20 minutes, and when you're talking like somebody with you know mental challenges and anything, it an extra distance can make or break whether an individual seeks or continues treatment. Uh so that that was one area that that came into play uh with my mental health, uh, with my depression was uh and then the anxiety of driving. I had so much anxiety when I was uh I was driving that I was so fearful that it took me a while to kind of get my bearings back, uh get my feet uh under me uh to to get back to driving. So an extra 20 minutes with a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, uh, was not really going to be an option for me. And from my understanding, again, don't hold me to this, don't quote, I'm I'm giving firsthand information on my experiences with psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists as we we continue. And what I was finding out with my little research that I I did because I was on a cadence of seeing this therapist every two weeks or every four weeks, there was a certain time frame, and so then that was making me more anxious and driving my anxiety even even higher because I'm like, what do I do? How am I gonna find somebody that's relatively close that has the same background? Uh and and so all these thoughts, uh, you know, I was hoping just hoping to be able to find a therapist, not a psychologist. And this is nothing against psychologists and and uh and and that uh but when you're talking about mental health, there's uh what I've been learning over the years, just as a person with lived experience, is somebody who is a psychologist and psychology, that's kind of like the overarching part of psychiatry and uh so many different facets, and a lot of times the psychologists are individuals who these are individuals who are putting together different reports and research and those types of things, but not that psychiatrists don't I just I just didn't think it would be a good fit in addition to the the extra 20 minute drive that I was gonna have to endure uh for each visit uh to go see a psychologist who's more into the numbers and trends and and all that is very important. This isn't a bad mouth, bad talk psychologist. Uh but what I wanted and what I was looking for was something much different. Uh but I I was looking for you know uh license and uh clinical social work or license and social work. I that was the type of an individual that I was in search of. Uh and I wasn't quite sure uh at the time because shortly after my therapist uh retired, then my psychiatrist retired. So then I'm like, oh my gosh, it's totally turning my life upside down. And I was concerned about medication management. Uh and so I I I I it took me a couple of months at least, I think, till I felt good enough with my psychiatrist, my medication management individual. And up until recently, I I was only seeing that that individual. I wasn't seeing a a therapist in addition to that. And I'll just be straight up, right? So money's involved, right? You got to pay for your visits. If you have insurance, if you don't have insurance, that's also another another thing to take into account. Some work with you or me, uh, when it comes to the money side and and and being able to be seen. Uh and some don't. And so you're taking somebody with so much anxiety, at least for me, so much anxiety, the depression, and all the other things that come with me, mental health-wise, uh, mental challenge-wise, and I gotta call around, I gotta I have to reach out and see if they even are taking new clients, because one of the things that I have found out is there's a big, big time, big time shortage in the field of social work and psychiatrists, and and there's just a huge void where the demand is so high, but the the actual amount of providers and the people that offer the services is much much lower. So these individuals are having increased workloads uh and potentially could have burnout of like, wow, you know, I'm making extra money or what have you. Uh, but we don't want them to burn out because we we want them to help us. So when I moved on from the idea of a psychologist, uh but again, everybody has to make their own decisions and look into things, uh, do their own research, due diligence, don't look, don't look or listen, or watch and think that oh, Justin said this, so this must be true. Like you need to do that yourself. This is what I found personally, and this is what worked for me. Um, and and so I was and am very lucky um to have found a therapist to be able to uh kind of restart what ended at least a couple years ago, uh, where again my therapist at the time abruptly retired. So the hope for me also played a huge role because every time I would make a call to see if there was an opening, or are you you know calling a firm or an organization? Are you taking, are you accepting new patients, uh new clients? Uh yeah, there were so many times where the answer was no. Sorry, we're not. And so again, we're we're talking about mental health, and and so that increases the anxiety of oh my gosh, that's that's one more no. Am I am I ever gonna find a therapist, a psychiatrist, uh it uh it's just it's hard to go through, and what else is hard to go through is something that I went through is uh well number one, even with insurance, there's still a price to pay, right? Very few organizations don't accept payment. So that's what makes Voices for Voices all the more valuable as a totality of an organization when we talk about our big goals and uh on top of the helping it reaching over three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond, because I don't have the belief, and we don't have the belief that somebody, for whatever reason, you know, I like I've been told in some not very many words that well, I'm part of a demographic that doesn't have a problem to find and pay for things, uh like psychiatrist appointments, like therapy appointments, with or without insurance. Um it's very uh hard to hear because that's that whole uh whatever they call it. Um you know, when you're looking at a certain group of people and saying, Oh, these these type of people, they don't have a problem, they don't have an issue, they don't, you know, they they're able to deal with it. Oh, and and and I can't because I'm not them, and look, look at their demographic and look at mine. So that's how we have this overarching goal of what we want to do, which we've shared, uh, but I'm not gonna keep sharing it because there's a lot of people out there that like to steal ideas, and that's not being mean, that's just being uh being truthful, seeing it, had it happen in our organization at various times. So that's uh that that's why uh yeah, we talk about rehab, which I haven't talked about a whole lot. You know, when I when I think of rehab, again, this is just me, this is my opinion. You know, I think of I don't maybe I don't ritzy might not be like the right word, but uh a very welcoming, high-end overlooking the ocean or mountains or uh open land, uh and in something that's ultra expensive, and so not everybody can afford that. Just like not everybody can afford visits to the psychiatrist, to uh the therapist, and I just wanna I just want to talk about this. It's so hard for somebody with mental challenges to actually reach out and ask for help. I just want to straight up say that. I've said it before, I'll keep saying it. It is so hard for somebody that's going through mental challenges to actually stand up and reach out for help. Because it's basically admitting, hey, I got I need help. I don't know what it is, but I something's just not right. And that's the part that a lot of people don't understand. They think it's just like, oh, I sprained my ankle, so I'm just gonna call, you know, the the the doctors and and that and get an appointment schedule. Like there's no shame in that. It just I got hurt, and can I get help? This is hey, there might be something that I need help with mentally, where we have that stigma that we've been talking about. Uh it takes a lot, and especially from somebody like me who's gone through that, it's hard. It's hard to admit though those types of things, and to either be shut down because of the money situation, not being able to afford it, uh, not accepting new patients, the wait list going out six months to be able to be seen. Uh, there's all kinds of hoops that need to be in many cases jumped through that it can make people just give up. And we don't want that. Every life is worth living, and so I want the people watching and listening to have those thoughts that think about that. If you're a family member, you're a loved one, think about that. Think about how hard it must be to reach out, raise your hand, and say, hey, I think I might have depression, hey, maybe I have schizophrenia, hey, maybe I have uh acute anxiety, uh and you know, down the road we can go. And so for us to be able to reach out and ask for help, number one, it takes a Strong person to do that. So that's why we don't we don't accept to talk about you know you know these these individuals are weak because they're reaching out for help or because there's mental challenges takes strength to do that to say you know what I've had it I've had it I've had it I need some help and then is that help there on the other side that reciprocation because we gotta we gotta bring hope to these people if you're watching and listening keep that hope alive keep that hope alive for some of you prayer might be something that helps that spiritual side the Bible reading the Bible that may be helpful as well, and all this really just comes together as we talk about self-improvement. We want to improve ourselves, we want to improve our quality of life, we want to improve just so we can experience regular events, regular uh experiences. You know, just the other night we had a you know with uh having a child, and you know, they had they had uh one of these dances with a family loud music, lights, kids just running all over from from the gym to the hallway to the uh cafeteria you gotta be on your toes. But that's something I never would have been able to do eight nine, ten years ago. So I'm happy for the people that were able to do it. I'm happy for myself, and I keep that hope live that there's always gonna be hope until that last, that final breath, that anxiety is gonna be quelled by being able to see a therapist, psychiatrist, maybe medication. I utilize prayer. You don't have to. We're all in this together. Yeah, I have one of the things that next to my name, next to Justin Allen Hayes, is major depression, depression, talk about mental health, anxiety, got that ADHD, got that ADD, got that, and I just have a hope that not just me, but that everybody across the world watching and listening is trying to improve themselves. One small step roll, crawl at a time. Maybe that's getting out of bed for the first time in a week. Maybe that's taking a shower the first time in two weeks or a bath. Maybe that's reaching out and asking for help. Because as we mentioned, every life's worth living. That includes yours, that includes mine, it includes everybody across the entire world. So thank you for joining us with this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. If you're able to, give us the thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, reach out to 25, 50, 100 your contacts and your phone. Uh if you're if you're able to follow all of our social medias. Um and we are a 501c3 nonprofit charity. Uh, so we do accept donations on a daily basis. You can go over to lovevoices.org, lovevoices.org, lovevoices.org, and you can spell that uh l-o-v-e, v-o-i-c-e-s.org. Thank you so much for joining us. And again, we have over 445 episodes in our catalog. Please check them out. I promise you will be impressed. You will like, and you will subscribe. Have a great day. It's been Justin Allen Hayes with Voices for Voices. Please be a voice for you, for somebody in need. Bye bye for now.