Frequently Asked Questions

You do not need to be in crisis to begin therapy. You are here because something feels off balance: disconnection, resentment, or the quiet question of why a life you worked this hard to build does not feel the way you expected it to.

Therapy gives you a place to understand what is happening, name what you need, and start making changes you can actually sustain.

Healing-Circle works with:

• Women ages 28 to 55, with a specialty in Women of Color
• Men ages 25 to 45
• Couples, with a specialty in premarital counseling
• Teens, with a specialty in Teens of Color

Teen clients are matched with a clinician on our team, and we check in with parents on a regular basis.

People come to Healing-Circle carrying:

• Trauma and the lasting effects of difficult experiences
• Anxiety, stress, or emotional overwhelm
• Loneliness, emptiness, or a missing sense of purpose
• Relationship conflict and communication breakdowns
• Resentment that has begun to feel cemented
• Difficulty setting and holding boundaries
• Disconnection from themselves and their bodies
• Family, financial, or life-transition stress
• Trouble enjoying the life they built
• The search for their own voice, identity, and truth

You do not need to know exactly what is wrong before you reach out. Figuring that out can be part of the work.

Call us at (301) 327-0866 or email info@healing-circle.org to request a consultation. Come as you are, and we will talk about what you need and what the next step could look like.

During the consultation, we listen to what is going on and what you want to change, then give you our availability and fee schedule. Once we confirm a day and time, you will receive an invitation to TherapyNotes, our client portal, to complete your intake paperwork.

After you log in to TherapyNotes, appointment reminders begin. You will get one two days before each session.

The first two sessions are for us to get to know each other. We will talk about what brought you to therapy, what has been happening in your life, and what you want to change.

We will name the themes that keep recurring and look at the family norms and unspoken rules you grew up with. We begin where you are and build from there.

Complete ALL documents sent through TherapyNotes before we meet. We go over the paperwork first, then we begin.

Both. For a lot of our clients, the hybrid option is what makes therapy fit around a real schedule.

Sessions are 55 minutes.

Our office is at 8730 Georgia Avenue, Suite 200, Silver Spring, MD 20910, in downtown Silver Spring. We are within walking distance of the Red Line, and there is ample street parking around the building at about $1 an hour.

When you get to the door, use the call box and find the listing for HEALING-CIRCLE LLC. Dial 2-0-4 and we will buzz you in.

Take the elevator to the second floor and wait outside Suite 200. Your therapist will come out to greet you.

You have to be signed in to TherapyNotes for the telehealth link to work: https://www.therapyportal.com/p/Healing108/telehealth/

Open the link ahead of time so you know it works, and find a space where you can talk without anyone else present.

If you are meeting from your car, park somewhere secure before the start time and check your signal. Hot spots are usually not strong enough to hold a session.

To reschedule or cancel, text AND email us more than 24 hours before your appointment. Inside the 24-hour window, a cancellation or a no-call, no-show carries a $100 late cancellation fee.

There are NO reminders after a no-show or a late cancellation.

Call the office at (301) 327-0866, email info@healing-circle.org, or contact your therapist directly.

We will wait up to 15 minutes for the session to begin. After 15 minutes we will need to reschedule.

If we cannot book that follow-up appointment within two weeks, we open your day and time slot to someone on the waiting list.

Email and text us before your appointment time and tell us what would work, so we can adapt our schedules. Staying home for a video session, coming in later, leaving early, a phone session, rescheduling.

If a genuine emergency comes up after the 24-hour reminder has gone out, your next session is free of charge.

Three cancellations in a three-month period, and we will talk about moving you to monthly sessions. Your standing time slot then goes to someone on the waiting list.

Monthly clients book every 30 days, and booking outside that window releases the slot to another client.

An outstanding balance of $50 or more has to be paid before we schedule another appointment.

If scheduling is difficult for three consecutive weeks, unless other arrangements were made in advance, we consider the professional relationship discontinued.

All of this is also spelled out in the Practice Policies documents you complete during intake.

We do not accept insurance. We are a self-pay practice, and there are four ways to cover sessions.

Self-Pay and Sliding Scale

During your consultation we go over our current session rates and sliding scale options if you need additional assistance. We also accept HSA cards.

Out-of-Network Benefits

We provide superbills you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. We also work with Mentaya, an online platform that handles the paperwork, submits your claims for processing, and mails you a check.

Mentaya charges 5% for processing.

The Loveland Foundation

The Loveland Therapy Fund connects Black women, girls, and nonbinary folks with high-quality, culturally competent mental health care. Recipients receive vouchers for therapy sessions at $120 a session, and Healing-Circle accepts those vouchers through the Loveland portal.

Loveland currently has a waitlist.

Open Path

Open Path serves clients in financial need who cannot afford market rates for therapy, lack adequate mental health coverage, and have an annual household income below $100,000. Sessions through Open Path are $70.

Healing-Circle reserves a limited number of reduced-fee openings, so joining Open Path does not guarantee an immediate opening. Contact us to ask about current availability or future openings.

Warmth, honesty, and a therapist who is genuinely present with you. We will not talk in circles or hand you busywork.

Together we set realistic goals, look at the patterns that keep repeating, and build practical ways to move forward.

Sometimes we will challenge the way you have been seeing a situation. We say what we see, and we say it because we take your experience seriously and want you to have another way through it.

This is real work and it asks something of you. Come prepared, and we will meet you there.

You do not have to translate yourself to receive meaningful care. Cultural attunement is where we start.

We make room for the cultural, racial, spiritual, familial, and community experiences that shaped who you are and how you move through the world. We stay curious about your particular experience and make no assumptions about what any part of your identity means to you.

Trauma-focused therapy helps you understand how painful or overwhelming experiences are still shaping your emotions, your body, your relationships, and your sense of safety. Here, that work is holistic, culturally attuned, and built around what you actually need.

Trauma takes many forms. It also develops through ongoing experience: emotional neglect, instability, discrimination, harm inside a relationship, chronic stress, or years of feeling unseen.

You do not have to prove your experience was “bad enough.” If it is affecting your life, it deserves care.

Healing loosens the hold the past has on you, so you can feel steadier, more present, and more alive in the life you are living now.

Holistic means your mental health is connected to your body, your relationships, your culture, your environment, and your spiritual life. Somatic means we pay attention to where stress and difficult experience live physically.

In session that can look like stopping when your jaw locks or your breathing goes shallow, and working with that before we go back to the story.

Depending on what you need and what you are comfortable with, we use grounding, body awareness, breathwork, reflection, and journaling to help you feel steadier and more connected to yourself.

Your source of connection is yours to name: God, faith, nature, the universe, your ancestors, or simply the sense that you are part of something larger.

We follow your lead here rather than imposing a belief system. If spiritual connection offers you steadiness, meaning, or support in your healing, we can explore that together.

Sometimes, and it will be realistic and relevant to the life you actually live. You will be invited to notice a pattern, try a different response, practice a boundary, or write down what came up after a hard conversation.

The point is to make what we do in session useful outside of it.

Clients also receive an invitation to Healing-Circle Haven, our client portal. It is a calm, secure companion to the work you do with your therapist.

Homework, journaling, mood tracking, encouragement, and private messaging all live in one warm space. Rooted, our own somatic journal, is there for you to download.

Come prepared, and do the work. Honesty is the only real requirement.

In practice that looks like:

• Coming ready to talk about what happened between sessions
• Journaling when a thought, feeling, or pattern surfaces
• Practicing the breathwork and grounding tools we build together
• Testing familiar interpretations against what is actually true
• Trying small, realistic changes in your daily life
• Telling your therapist when something is not helping
• Allowing yourself to be supported

Real beats polished, every time.

That makes complete sense. Trust builds at its own pace, and you are allowed to take your time, ask questions, and share what feels manageable to share.

We will be honest with you, and we will not rush you. Our aim is for you to feel held and supported while you do real work.

Yes. We offer couples counseling and premarital counseling, including The Premarital Checklist, our premarital series.

Couples work strengthens communication, clarifies expectations, sorts through family and financial pressure, and addresses resentment before the resentment hill is cemented.

Our focus is the pattern between you, the foundation underneath it, and both partners feeling seen.

Start individually. You can understand your own patterns, get clear on your boundaries, and decide how you want to move forward, whatever your partner chooses to do.

That often changes the relationship more than people expect.

There is no universal timeline. Length depends on your goals, your history, your current circumstances, and how deep the concerns run.

We set realistic goals and review your progress regularly, so therapy stays purposeful and you always know why you are here.

Change shows up in ordinary days long before the work feels complete. Over time:

• Catching an old thought pattern and interrupting it
• Naming what you feel instead of pushing it aside
• Understanding what triggers you and where it came from
• Grounding yourself when your body activates, without being prompted
• Keeping self-care routines realistic enough to hold
• Setting a boundary and saying why it matters
• Saying your needs out loud
• Staying in a relationship without abandoning yourself
• Resting without believing you have to earn it
• Enjoying more of the life you built

You are ready to finish, or to move to less frequent sessions, when you can challenge an old story before you believe it and trust yourself through a hard moment. When the skills you practiced here feel like your own.

That is ownership.