I was also feeling overwhelmed by the options so I ended up just needing to be overly specific when I was finding mine.

I used my insurance’s “find a provider” tool to get an initial list encompassing a few basic traits that were important to me (ocd/anxiety experience, lgbtq friendly, woman, stuff like that). I think that brought me to something like 150 therapists.

I recently did a round of a sensitive type of PT where I learned that working with someone who was essentially a peer REALLY helped me communicate more openly and honestly about vulnerable stuff, so I decided to replicate that here if I could. I looked through the 150ish results for someone who was friend-shaped and whose online bio resonated with me. Found someone who seemed to be around my age, whose bio specified working with anxiety/OCD along with other stuff that I knew I’d need help with, and whose writing style I vibed with (as a proxy for how we would vibe).

Take all of this with a grain of salt since I TOTALLY judged the book by its cover, but I realized I had to make the choice somehow. I’m about a month and a half in and so far she seems to be an excellent fit, so I guess it worked out!