I’m a Man With Depression and Anxiety & I Tried BetterHelp

Was BetterHelp Worth It?

Yes, I think my experience with BetterHelp was worth it. I got some actionable steps to take for my immediate problems and ended up meeting a therapist who I think will be able to help me manage my motivation. While I was hesitant about the cost, I feel like BetterHelp’s price matches the value it offers—as long as you put in the work of finding a good therapist and using all the resources the app has to offer.

Why I Chose BetterHelp & My Hesitations

I’ve had a long journey with mental health. After handling the OCD symptoms of my childhood and going through what I’ve come to call the “Angry Years” of my young adulthood, I felt like I’d started to get a handle on my most debilitating symptoms. My life was mostly calm and my relationships were good. But, I was left with a relentless lack of motivation stemming from a constantly gnawing sensation that nothing I did really mattered in the long run. Existential problems, in other words. With that in mind, my main goal was to find a therapist who I could see over a long period of time and really take a deep dive into why I felt so apathetic all the time.

After cycling through a number of therapists who never clicked all the way, I’d finally found one who worked well for me on the Talkspace platform. Unfortunately, though, my wife recently changed jobs which led to me losing my insurance benefits. Disappointed, I started the search for an online therapist that would: A.) Be a good fit for me and “click” well with my personality (and picky temperament), and B.) Be affordable enough to remain a practical long-term option.

I chose BetterHelp because I knew it offered some type of financial assistance, which would be helpful since I needed to pay out of pocket. I also knew BetterHelp was one of the largest online therapy platforms, with many therapists to choose from, so I was hopeful I could find a good fit and start working with them quickly. The last thing I needed was to spend weeks’ worth of therapy fees to end up with therapists who weren’t what I was looking for. After researching some differences between BetterHelp and Talkspace, I finally decided BetterHelp would be the best bet for my personal situation.

Signing Up for BetterHelp

Getting started with BetterHelp was a cinch. I downloaded the mobile app to my iPhone and started the sign-up process. It was a beautiful day outside and I desperately wanted to be out in the garden, so I was hoping to make this as quick as possible. The app promised a quick and easy onboarding process and it delivered—my ultimate time spent on the questionnaire was only about six minutes.

As I was working through the process, I kept in my mind that I wanted a non-religious therapist. I’ve had many existential conversations with Christians in my day, being a former worship leader at a church, so I felt that perhaps it was time for a change of pace.

Notably, if I selected “Christianity” as my religion, the form would ask if I wanted a Christian-based therapist, but there were no such options for any of the other religious identities. I was disappointed, as I was interested in narrowing my search to a therapist who also had expertise in Eastern philosophies like Buddhism or Taoism, but that wasn’t an option. Non-religious was as good as I was going to get.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t able to specify my preferred days and times for therapy, which, later on, proved to cause problems when my initial therapist match didn’t have any times that worked for me. Since I have a rigid work schedule, it would have been nice to specify which days and times I wasn’t available.

At this point, I needed to enter credit card information to go any further (and I was pretty dismayed about the price tag I saw).

Considering the Cost of BetterHelp

Once I got to the checkout screen, I was dismayed by the price: $360 monthly. This was pretty high for me to pay every month, especially since I was interested in ongoing care. I did a bit of shopping around and considered Online-Therapy.com since they have a more affordable cash-pay rate for certain plans. However, I ultimately decided to stick with BetterHelp, as Online-Therapy.com is geared toward CBT and I was looking to focus on a different modality. I thought leaning away from something so “establishment” as CBT could help me get some new perspectives on my apathy.

So, I decided to try out BetterHelp’s financial aid program to see if I could get as many discounts as I possibly could (groceries are expensive, you know).

Getting Financial Aid With BetterHelp

Prior to checkout, there was a button labeled “I can’t afford therapy” that directed me to a form where I could input various details about my financial situation. BetterHelp uses these responses to determine whether you’re eligible for a 10% – 40% discount on monthly subscription fees.

With my particular financial details, BetterHelp approved me for 10% off my monthly cost. I was met with a message stating that my discount lasts for three months and that I would be able to apply to extend this by another three months a week before my discount ends. While 10% isn’t game-changing by any means, I was surprised to get anything at all.

After shopping around, I quickly realized that this was the best price I was going to get. Traditional therapy usually costs at least $100 per session, so my final rate of $81 per session was actually a pretty good deal.¹

Matching With My Initial BetterHelp Therapist

After I went through the intake process and provided my credit card information, BetterHelp let me know that I would be matched with a therapist based on the information and preferences I provided. About two hours later, I received an email stating I’d been matched with my therapist and could schedule an appointment at my convenience.

While I felt my assigned therapist was a decent fit at first glance, and I was impressed to see she had a PhD, I was disappointed when I logged in to schedule my first appointment—she only had availability on Mondays and no other weekdays. While I’m usually able to make Monday appointments work, sometimes I’d like a little more flexibility than that.

Nonetheless, I went ahead and scheduled an appointment. Unfortunately, the day I set the appointment ended up not working out, so I messaged my therapist to see if we could change it. She responded relatively quickly, but the appointments she could offer me were still limited. Ultimately, I decided to go through the process of finding a different BetterHelp therapist.

Switching My Initial Therapist

After starting the therapist-switching process, the app took me to a page that prompted me to provide my reason for changing therapists along with some preferences for my new therapist. This time around, I decided to narrow down the search to male therapists, as I have only ever worked with female therapists. Maybe a change of pace would be a good thing.

After entering some details, the BetterHelp app presented me with several options to choose from—after a few minutes of reading therapist bios, I finally selected a new therapist and was relieved to see that he had appointments available within a couple of days and had a much more varied schedule that seemed to fit what I was looking for.

All-in-all, the process of changing therapists was pretty painless and didn’t require contacting customer service. I wish BetterHelp had presented me with a list of potential therapists in the first place rather than assigning me one, but the process for swapping only took up a few minutes of my time.

My First Therapy Session

I logged into the BetterHelp app on my mobile phone a couple of minutes before my 2:15pm appointment. I was greeted with a very noticeable “Join Meeting” button that took me to the video room where I would spend the next half hour chatting with a therapist who ultimately wouldn’t work for me. The app had no problems loading the video room, but I’m still disappointed by BetterHelp’s glaring lack of a mute button (I later found out this isn’t a problem on desktop).

My inability to silence my microphone aside, the session went relatively well. The therapist—an LMFT with 20 years of experience—was fairly personable and down-to-earth, but he spoke with a preacherly zeal that got under my skin right off the bat.

As the session rolled on, it occurred to me that this therapist and I were approaching the process from different points of view, and maybe his approach wasn’t quite ideal for the things I wanted to work on. He even disclosed to me that he was a “church counselor” and approached things from a Christian worldview. I couldn’t tell if BetterHelp had just disregarded my desire for a non-religious therapist, or if the therapist had misrepresented himself on his profile. Either way, it wasn’t what I wanted.

Poor therapist-client fits do come up occasionally in therapy, but it was somewhat disappointing that after I’d hand-selected this fellow from a list of his peers, he wasn’t quite how he read on paper. Nonetheless, we closed out the session on good terms after about 30 minutes.

Switching Therapists Again (And Again)

I spent the afternoon simmering on my experience with my therapist and finally decided to go ahead with switching therapists again. I followed the same process in the app and gave some deeper thought and attention to the preferences I could select.

This time around, it was a bit of a struggle.

After reading through a few bios, I settled on one only to later find out that he only offered sessions at night, when I was unavailable. Repeat the process.

A complaint I developed as I was looking through therapist bios was this: Every therapist I read about had “experience” in tons of therapy modalities and orientations. While I’m not doubting these therapists’ skills, I have my doubts that someone can be as good at practicing both CBT and existential therapy. So, the tags, treatment areas, and clinical approaches almost seemed a bit misleading. It felt as if I had very little agency in my search.

In that same vein, the therapist bios I read began to run together. They all had mostly the same message and offered very little actionable information to work with.

Undeterred, I selected a therapist that seemed to align with what I was looking for and had appointments available when I needed them.

At this point in my therapy journey, I’d started to get tired of rehashing my life story to so many different people. To avoid jumping into a session completely in the dark, I decided to send my therapist an introductory message this time that outlined some of my history and what I was looking for in therapy.

It took me about 15 minutes to craft a message that shared some of my history, my past struggles with OCD-adjacent symptoms, and my tricky history with religion. I emphasized that I was looking for a long-term therapist who could help me unpack my baggage and help me relate that back to my current symptoms of depression.

My therapist responded to my message by saying she would not see me and that I was not a good fit for her type of practice based on what I’d said. She cited my history of OCD symptoms as one of the reasons, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t why I wanted to see her today. Despite her bio saying she specialized in treating obsessions and compulsions, she said she had no experience with OCD and did not work with it at all.

As I knew the chat thread would close soon, I let her know her bio was incorrect before swapping therapists again. She said she’d look into it.

Disappointed, I repeated the process of finding a new therapist. I actually ended up loosening the preferences I’d selected in order to be presented with new therapists, as the system was presenting me with the same batch repeatedly. I read through another batch of bios and selected a doctoral-level clinician in hopes she would have the experience I was looking for. Thankfully, she had plenty of availability.

As a note, when you change therapists, your chat log is deleted, so that fine-quality intro message I’d crafted was lost to time. Undaunted, I wrote a new one outlining what I was looking for.

This time, my therapist came up to bat and knocked it out of the park.

My Second Therapy Session With BetterHelp

I was surprised to find that this new therapist’s bio said she didn’t conduct video sessions—considering what I’d been through so far, I decided to opt for a chat session this time. If this therapist also didn’t work out, chatting felt like a less exhausting initial session that could hopefully save me some frustration.

Using Live Chat for My BetterHelp Session

I’ve used live chat with BetterHelp once before. At that time, it wasn’t my favorite communication method for therapy. But, this time it struck me as a really good way to handle a kick-off session. I didn’t have to worry about where I was or what I looked like. BetterHelp’s unique live chat room allowed both me and my therapist to see what the other was writing in real-time (you can turn this feature off for both parties if you find it off-putting).

Feeling a bit lazy, I decided to take my evening bath while I chatted with my therapist—a ritual I ended up repeating since I enjoyed it so much. The freedom that live messaging brings to the table is definitely unique.

As long as both parties are relatively quick typists, you can get a surprising amount done in 30 minutes of texting. My therapist got to know a bit about my background, as well as some current struggles I was experiencing. She was able to provide me with thoughts on my behavior and dove deeper into how this tied back to how I likely viewed the world. Just what I was looking for!

We closed the session out with a brief discussion of my therapist’s approach to care and her theoretical orientation in psychology. I was impressed with how knowledgeable she was and it seemed clear to me that the doctorate and extra experience made all the difference compared to other therapists I’d seen.

My Third Therapy Session With BetterHelp

Since I was so impressed with my first messaging session, I decided to give it another go. Having already scheduled a phone session, I couldn’t find a way to manually change the type of session myself, so I wrote to my therapist to see if she could set it up. Thankfully, she was able to just send me a chat invite when the session started.

I repeated my process of taking a good soak during my therapy session and I really can’t recommend it enough. My therapist and I explored physical activity during this session and she provided me with a number of helpful tips for staying active and avoiding a sedentary lifestyle. She gave me great resources and tips for improving my motivation through activity.

Exploring BetterHelp’s Extra Features

I was pleased to see that the BetterHelp app offers a few features that should help make my online therapy experience more effective. A journaling feature for jotting down thoughts that can be shared with my therapist, a tool for creating actionable therapeutic goals, and therapy worksheets help round out the experience.

Worksheets

Before my messaging session, my therapist had sent me two worksheets to complete that would help her get a better understanding of my background and presenting problems, one for setting an overall therapy goal and another for describing my life story. I thought the worksheets were pretty slick and could definitely see how they’d be useful if your therapist utilizes them effectively. Filling them out was easy and the app automatically sent my responses to my therapist for her to review.

Journaling

The BetterHelp app’s journaling feature is a neat little tool that provides you with a thought-provoking prompt every day. I’m definitely more of a guided journaler, so I appreciated the prompts, but the system also works well if you prefer to go promptless.

The journaling feature allows you to format your entries with headers, bullets, images, and a few different fonts. While it isn’t as feature-rich as some of the best journaling apps on the market, I think I’ll find BetterHelp’s journaling features to be useful in the long run. It should help me get a better picture and understanding of my apathy and be able to share those insights directly with my therapist.

Goal-Setting

I thought BetterHelp’s unique goal-setting feature had the potential to help keep therapy sessions more structured and serve as a great way to guide the experience. One of the problems I’ve had with online therapy in the past is that sometimes sessions can feel too loosely structured, so having a method for keeping on track is very helpful.

BetterHelp prompted me to get started with my first goal prior to my first session and guided me to come up with an overarching goal that I wanted to achieve. Then, the app helped me break this goal down into actionable steps. While I definitely could’ve done this on my own with pen and paper, the Goals feature is helpful because it gives you some guidance on structuring the goals, and automatically sends your goals to your therapist so you can use them to help guide your sessions.

What’s Next for Me & BetterHelp?

After working through far more therapists than I expected to in a relatively short span of time, I’m pretty pleased with my outcome at BetterHelp. I managed to get three good-quality sessions within the month and found a therapist who I feel comfortable moving forward with.

I’m planning on continuing with BetterHelp for as long as I can afford it – or until I manage to get my insurance benefits back. If I do get insurance, I’ll probably be shopping around for an online therapy option that accepts insurance.

Is BetterHelp Right for You?

BetterHelp would be a good choice for any online therapy seekers who don’t have insurance benefits for mental health. It’s fast and easy, and the financial aid program can make it a bit more affordable. In addition to adult therapy, BetterHelp offers Teen Counseling (for ages 13–19) and Regain (therapy for couples).

BetterHelp doesn’t accept insurance at all, so you’ll want to look for alternatives if you plan to use your insurance to pay for therapy. Likewise, BetterHelp can’t prescribe medications, so those seeking online psychiatry services will need to look elsewhere.

How to Get the Most Out of BetterHelp

Since BetterHelp is a monthly subscription, one of your top concerns is probably to find the best therapist for you as quickly as possible so you aren’t spending countless therapy hours (and dollars) just shopping around. To help speed things up, one of the best pieces of advice I have is to utilize the messaging feature in BetterHelp to send introductory messages to therapists prior to your first session.

Sending a message before your initial therapy session gives you an opportunity to express your goals, expectations, and ideas about therapy before you ever get started, and your therapist can work with you asynchronously to make sure it’s a good fit. Of course, before this, you’ll want to spend some time thinking deeply about what you’re hoping to get out of the experience.