Your therapy should belong to you, not your insurance provider. Insurance requires extensive justification for treatment, which means some of your information is sent to your insurance. With private pay, your therapy stays private.

Insurance often has limits on care. Mental health is too important to arbitrarily cap your coverage.

You are unique, and you want your therapy to reflect the goals you are working toward without having to fit into categories deemed "medically necessary" by insurance providers.

You want to know what you are paying, and when you are paying it. You don't want surprises on your therapy bill later on.

It takes a lot of extra work to manage insurance paperwork - time that would be better spent on helping you! Therapists can spend up to half their time on insurance documentation, leading them to be rushed and overworked. You want your therapist to be focused on therapy, not administration.

Insurance may seem cheap and easy, but by now we all know that it is neither. All those extra steps add time, money, and uncertainty.

Private pay can still be affordable, especially when combined with an HSA account. Use pre-tax money, making it cheaper for you, and all that money goes to further your mental health rather than to the insurance company.