Content Note: This essay includes discussion of mental illness, hospitalization, postpartum mental health struggles, and suicidal ideation. The content is shared with care and intention, but may be difficult for some readers. Please take care of yourself as you read.
Up until that point, I had never struggled seriously with mental health issues. Then, within a single week, I went from being a functioning high school senior to an incapacitated puddle of tears. I couldn’t sleep alone in a room, couldn’t complete basic tasks, and couldn’t make it through a full day of school. The onset felt as violent as a physical accident would have been—but there were no visible wounds. There was only crippling anxiety, relentless intrusive thoughts I couldn’t shut off, and nowhere to hide from them.
I went from thinking about my latest crush to wondering whether I would spend the rest of my life in a mental institution.
I remember the behavioral health clinic in my hometown of Ogden, just down the street from the hospital. I remember a school assembly where a student body officer pretended to convulse outside the building—an attempt at humor that implied anyone who went there must be “crazy.” I remember feeling like damaged goods. The plans I had imagined for my life—college, marriage, children, a meaningful career—suddenly felt fragile and possibly unreachable.
I began seeing a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with anxiety and OCD. With medication and treatment, I gradually improved. OCD, as I would learn, can be episodic. There are seasons when it is quiet enough to forget it exists, and seasons when it is overwhelming. Often, people stop treatment during the good periods—only to be blindsided when stress builds and symptoms return.
There was life after my diagnosis, but it wasn’t simple. I had stretches of stability punctuated by difficult weeks. Because I hadn’t felt anxious or depressed in years, I cut my SSRI dose in half. After graduating from college, surrounded by friends I had known for years, I found myself without a job, without a partner, and without a clear next step. I moved back home.
Like clockwork, the OCD returned.
I resumed therapy with an excellent therapist and increased my medication again, expecting the symptoms to fade. They didn’t. The anxiety was so intense that I would vomit—not from illness, but from being completely overwhelmed. Eventually, things did improve. I found strategies that helped, and I moved forward with my life.
I got married. I moved to Pennsylvania. I became pregnant with my first child.
I knew there was a risk for postpartum mental health challenges, but after several symptom-free years, I assumed I was “better.” The pregnancy and birth went well. Then, a few months after my daughter was born, the symptoms returned with a force that shocked me. I struggled to eat, to complete daily tasks, and the strain began to erode my marriage. I kept hoping the clouds would lift. Sometimes they did—just enough to make the darkness feel threatening rather than absolute.
An unplanned pregnancy followed, and my mental health continued to deteriorate. I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t stop worrying that my husband would leave because I was miserable to live with. I couldn’t stop worrying that I wouldn’t be able to care for my daughter—or the baby on the way.
After years of medication trials, hospitalizations, and being labeled “treatment resistant,” I lost hope. I wasn’t myself anymore. I knew I scared the people around me. I felt trapped in a web that would never loosen.
In a moment of complete despair, I attempted to end my life.
I share that not for shock value, but because it is part of the truth. I didn’t want to die—I wanted the suffering to stop. I survived. I was hospitalized. I gave birth. I spent weeks in inpatient psychiatric care while my brain slowly began to heal. Much of that time is hazy, but I remember moments of profound vulnerability and humiliation—and eventually, the smallest flickers of relief.
Something shifted. I don’t know whether it was the timing, the treatments, the medications, or simply that my body and brain were no longer under the strain of pregnancy. What I do know is that I began to have a few good days. Then a few more.
My marriage did not survive. I was not suddenly high-functioning or pain-free. But I had pieces of myself back.
Now, more than a decade later, I have finished graduate school. I am a therapist. I have started a company to help people find support sooner than I did. I have experienced long stretches—years, even—of minimal symptoms. I have also had seasons where OCD, trauma, and depression resurface, and I continue to do the work I ask my clients to do, alongside a skilled therapist of my own.
Some days, getting out of bed still feels Herculean.
And I want people to know this: even if I look like I have it together, I have been lower than the cold floor of a psychiatric unit. I have clawed my way out of a darkness I once believed was permanent, with the help of loving family, friends, and clinicians who didn’t give up on me.
That experience—more than anything else—is why I care so deeply about access to care. It’s why I believe no one should have to wait years to find help. And it’s why, when I later found myself burned out as a therapist and watching clients struggle to find support, I knew something had to change.
The mental health system is strained — not just for clients, but for therapists too.
People who need help often don’t know where to start. Therapists who want to do meaningful work are burning out under systems that were never designed to sustain them. Somewhere in the middle, people are waiting — sometimes for years — before they ever receive the care they need.
This is the story of how NextTherapist came to be. Not from a business plan or a pitch deck, but from lived experience — as a therapist, a single mom, and someone who could no longer ignore what wasn’t working.
When I was in graduate school, most of my cohort talked about one thing: private practice. At the time, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to do work I loved. I was excited about becoming a therapist — sitting with people in their pain, helping them make sense of their stories, and witnessing real change. The pressure to “make enough money” didn’t feel overwhelming yet. My kids were small. Life felt manageable.
I didn’t yet understand how quickly passion could turn into survival.
A few years later, reality hit. I was working at a private practice. It was a beautiful office — although it had no windows, which I still believe shaved years off my life. I had clients I genuinely loved working with. I had colleagues. On the outside, everything looked fine.
Inside, I was drowning.
I was, and still am, a single mom to two girls. My days were tightly packed: getting my kids ready for school, dropping them off on the way to work, seeing clients back-to-back from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with no real breaks, then leaving work to pick my kids up and start the second shift of the day. There was no space to breathe — emotionally or physically.
I carried my clients home with me. I replayed sessions in my head while making dinner. I felt guilty for being exhausted, guilty for not having more energy for my kids, and guilty for even wanting more when I technically had what I was supposed to want. My nervous system felt like a frayed phone charger — still working, but one bend away from completely giving out.
At that time, I was an associate therapist — meaning I had graduated but still needed to complete 3,000 supervised hours. I was making about $45 an hour. I was seeing anywhere from 22 to 25 clients a week, didn’t qualify for health insurance or benefits, and was responsible for holding immense emotional weight day after day.
The math didn’t make sense.
My hourly rate was $150. I was making roughly one-third of that. I realized then that if I kept going at that pace, I wasn’t just going to burn out — I was going to leave the field entirely.
And I wasn’t alone.
Therapist burnout isn’t an individual failure. It’s systemic. Many therapists leave the profession within the first few years — not because they don’t care, but because the system relies on self-sacrifice to function. Associates are often underpaid, overworked, and told burnout is simply part of “paying dues.” When therapists burn out, clients feel it too. Continuity of care suffers. Waitlists grow. People who finally reach out for help are met with silence or rejection.
Around this same time, friends and family started asking me a familiar question: “Can you help me find a therapist?” I would send them to the best directory I knew — Psychology Today. And almost every time, they came back saying the same thing: “I looked, but I couldn’t find anyone.”
They were overwhelmed by endless profiles. Unsure who actually specialized in what they needed. Afraid to reach out. Afraid of being rejected. Afraid of choosing wrong. And unlike asking for a plumber, many people don’t feel comfortable asking their neighbors for a recommendation when their marriage is struggling — or when they can barely get out of bed due to depression. Shame thrives in silence.
At the same time, I was off and on dating apps — swiping right, swiping left, deleting the app, downloading it again. And it hit me. What if we took the matching technology of dating apps and applied it to finding a therapist?
Instead of endlessly searching, what if people were matched based on their needs, preferences, and goals?
I kept seeing the same problem from two sides: clients overwhelmed by choice, and therapists burning out under broken systems. The solution had to serve both.
Research shows that many people think about starting therapy for an average of seven years before actually making an appointment. Seven years of carrying anxiety. Seven years of untreated trauma. Seven years of relationship patterns repeating. Early intervention changes lives. Shortening that gap matters.
Making therapy easier to access isn’t just convenient — it’s lifesaving.
I called a friend whose husband worked in tech and understood app development. I started meeting with a developer. Shortly after, a CFO and CEO joined — because while I love being brave and trying new things, executive functioning and high-conflict dynamics are not my strengths.
What started as an idea became a team.
Today, NextTherapist has a full marketing team, real employees, and a growing network of highly qualified, non-burnt-out therapists who want to do meaningful work without sacrificing themselves in the process.
At its core, NextTherapist is built on a few simple beliefs: that therapists do better work when they are supported, fairly compensated, and rested; that clients deserve care that is accessible, ethical, and aligned with their needs; that burnout should not be normalized; and that therapy should not feel impossible to start.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed trying to find a therapist, unsure where to begin, or discouraged after hitting dead ends — you’re not alone. And if you’re a therapist who loves this work but knows something has to change — you’re not alone either.
NextTherapist exists because people deserve better help, sooner — and because therapists deserve to stay in the work they love.
This is just the beginning.
