We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alejandro Daniel Pina a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alejandro Daniel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you ever experienced a times when your entire field felt like it was taking a U-Turn?

I’ve had an interesting experience growing as a licensed therapist because of the Covid timeline. Compared to my colleagues, I’m still rather new with about six years under my belt. I’m very lucky that the timing of my novice years helped me transition into the all digital online telehealth world of therapy due to Covid. I hadn’t already invested funds into a permanent office space that didn’t go unused for two years. Also, my previous training and work at a national suicide hotline ensured that I was already comfortable with long silences over the phone when some individual clients who chose to not use video or were unable to for sessions.

But the larger lesson I discovered is that I strongly believe that online couple therapy is more therapeutically beneficial for couples than in person. I was able to witness firsthand the differences between seeing the same couple in the office compared to seeing them from their own sofa in their own home. I feel confident that future research will support what I believe; the office can’t replace the intimacy a couple has when doing sessions at home without a therapist being physically beside them. Unfortunately, Covid helped me come to this understanding, but I do think online couples therapy will remain and become more widely utilized.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist with a masters of science in counseling psychology. This was a very long process that leads to a really tough and frustrating clinical exam. Before you even qualify to take it, you have to complete 3,000 supervised hours of work; which included necessary hours for different types of therapy sessions. I had not planned on specializing my work with couples, but in order to qualify for the license you’re forced to kind of give it a shot!

It’s really important when looking for an online couples therapist, or any kind of couples therapy, that you work with someone that has specific couples training on their resume. I can tell you that I was kind of making it up based on the little schooling that was offered regarding couples work for a counseling psychology masters program. If you do work with an Associate who is not Licensed, then check to see if their supervisor is specifically trained in a couples therapy orientation. Unfortunately, my supervisor was definitely not!

I’m really grateful that I found my way to the Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy model and training. The classes that I’ve taken have been invaluable in the work that I do today. I’m a completely different therapist than who I was while getting my hours and I’m proud of the work that I do.

An Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist will help you discover a deeper understanding of your experience, then help you express yourself to your partner more productively. We might feel we have our partner figured out, but we have to be open to figuring ourselves out to understand why we get caught in cycles.

We are not here to judge arguments. We are here to help you express yourself to your partner so that they can hear you. And you both need to be heard so that you can both support one another.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

There aren’t a lot of kids that grow up wanting to be a therapist, let alone a couples therapist. Being a therapist is a profession that utilizes many skill sets that can’t be taught. You can’t teach resiliency through painful experience. You can’t force people to go through difficult times. And there is so much nuance between a young person’s hard time compared to someone else who has lived through almost a lifetime of experiences.

Unfortunately, really wonderful therapists are fantastically attuned to other’s emotions and are highly empathetic because of the amount of pain they have survived. That experience does determine how well the therapist is trained and can help, but it is a unique aspect of the field that is less talked about.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I’ve tried to keep my sessions rates in check, even though I could try to take advantage of the market. I have found it frustratingly unethical that individuals are expected to pay exorbitant amounts of money for mental health support. It is a tough balance to work in this field between fully succumbing to charging ridiculous rates and also charging the appropriate amount when you want to be taken seriously as a clinician.

One of the reasons I enjoy doing online couples therapy is a financial one. I feel comfortable and ethically sound charging $210 per 50 minute session because two people are covering the cost. Individual sessions in most markets tend to average around $150-$175. So, if $100 for an individual session is already below the average of out-of-pocket therapy costs, then what I’m offering for a couple is a very reasonable deal.

The most important part of the session rate is finding a price point so that clients can return to sessions consistently without stress of finances.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.FeelUnderstood.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FeelUnderstood/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alejandro-daniel-pina-lmft-feel-understood/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/alejandro-daniel-pina-lmft-feel-understood-los-angeles-2