New Patients

At Roots, we take your search for help really seriously. We are typically looking at therapy when we are in a really bad spot, and so the idea of waiting a long time to hear from someone (or worse, never hearing back!) is awful. Our Care Coordinator will reach out within 1 business day and start working with you to get you on the schedule with a clinician. You should anticipate that your first appointment will be within 1 week of completing the form.

We are a cash pay clinic, which means we do not submit claims to insurance. We have gone back and forth on this as we have continued to grow, but for now, we feel strongly that working with you is more important to us than working for an insurance company. When you become in-network with insurance companies, there are additional issues that arise out of our hands, like paying for sessions and then issuing “claw backs,” where they later determine that your service wasn’t covered. Insurance companies regularly set session limits, so even if we are in the middle of our work together, services can be cut off by the company. On our side, insurance is a significant additional investment of time and money to maintain. Instead, we have opted as a clinic to invest our resources in additional training and expertise to better serve our clients. We feel strongly that if we are better at our work, then you get a better product for your investment, and our aim is to offer more specialized care for you.

We do offer virtual therapy, and we will offer that to anyone who wants it (in Texas).  In-person is unique because we feel strongly that both of us will feel more with each other than through a screen.  Virtual can sometimes make for unexpected interruptions (like the internet going out or someone walking in on you), and so the mediated experience through video is just a little bit different than being together in person.  That said, we will meet you where you are at (virtually or in our office), as long as you are in Texas.

As you are getting scheduled by our Care Coordinator with your therapist, you should have some info on our waiting room and what to expect as you arrive.  We don’t have any staff member (like a secretary) in the waiting room, so you will just come in and take a seat until your time of appointment when your therapist will come out to greet you. 

In your first session, you will spend most of the session talking through what brought you to therapy, potentially some about your family and upbringing, and then going over paperwork with the therapist to make sure there is clarity on the process.  We typically talk a little less in the first session, just to make sure you have time to really get started.  It’s normal for the first session to feel uncomfortable, but you should also feel some kind of relief in feeling heard and understood, and our clients have all kinds of emotional responses in the first session.  Some folks cry more than they normally would, while others don’t.  As you will find out quickly, we are really comfortable with all varieties of feeling.  In your first session, you ought to feel a little bit of direction on the process and some connection with your new therapist. If both of those are missing, our Care Coordinator will always follow up with you after the first session, and that’s a good moment to let us know.  Sometimes it takes more time, and sometimes it just isn’t a good fit.  Both are okay with us - we just want you to get the care and support you are coming for.

We love this question.  Therapy is a really significant investment of your time and finances.  This depends on the clinician here at Roots, as well as what you are here for.  Most kiddos are short-term, as there is something really specific they are here for and our child therapists are focused on helping you and your kiddo move through the situation with the skills you need to keep going.  Deeper work like relationship patterns and trauma tend to take longer, as there is more to cover than just one specific situation. 

Ask your therapist about it as you get started and they will be direct with you about what to expect, and what indicators you should see as there is improvement.  Some folks will stay much longer, but transition to less frequency (like biweekly or monthly or even as needed) to check in. Our focus is on what you need and what you came for, and so the length of treatment depends on how deep we need to go to help you find the change you are seeking.

This is a really common question here in Bryan-College Station.  There are different approaches to faith in a counseling or therapy setting.  Some clinicians will have a specific mindset that you share their faith and that you both believe the same things and that you want specific direction with that shared belief system.  Others might take the other extreme, and keep faith for pastors and spiritual directors to handle, and avoid it in the office altogether. 

At Roots, we start from the place of where you are at.  If faith has been important to you, then let’s talk about it!  One unique approach for us with this more psychotherapeutic lens is not just to consider where faith has been a support for you (and for us to continue using that faith as we do the work together), but also where it has brought harm and has kept you from wholeness.  So, in short, no, we don’t do faith-based counseling.  We stick with a more human-based psychotherapy, which includes your faith (and not ours).

In Texas, we have a few different licenses: licensed psychologists (LP), licensed clinical social workers (LMSW/LCSW), licensed professional counselors (LPC), and licensed marriage & family therapists (LMFT). Because counseling is in the name of our most common license in Texas (LPC), counseling and therapy are often used interchangeably. However, counseling is typically reserved for a practice that will give more advice, where therapy typically refers to the practice of listening and working to explore deeper insights about someone, with special attention to underlying issues, not just the symptoms on the surface. At Roots, we will dip into counseling when there is a crisis, and you will get some counseling when you are seeking more immediate relief from severe symptoms, as well as in our parenting work. However, we tend to believe that deeper change happens when someone has more understanding of how they got where they are, how those patterns are being repeated (even in the therapeutic relationship!), and then you begin to see a different path towards more wholeness, intimacy, and sturdiness in your life. So while we will certainly provide some counseling as needed, we want to go deeper in the work with you to help you not just alleviate the current pain, but to understand yourself more and feel confident in your ability to bear pain and experience joy again, too.