In California, the Medical Board has improved its mental health questions—but the anxiety about disclosure remains. Other states where you maintain licenses may ask even more intrusive questions.

📋 Hospital Credentialing Gets Personal

When applying for hospital privileges or updating credentials, you may face questions about:

• Current mental health treatment
• History of psychiatric hospitalization
• Medications that could “impair judgment”
• Gaps in employment that might raise red flags

💼 Insurance Companies Track Everything

When you use insurance for therapy:

• A mental health diagnosis gets coded
• Claims create discoverable documentation
• Insurers share information across networks
• Future insurance applications may be affected

Your therapy stays between you and your therapist. Period.

Without being labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis you don’t need.

✅ Complete Control Over Your Records

With private pay therapy:

• You control who sees your records (if anyone)
• Notes are minimal and clinically focused
• No insurance company can subpoena documentation
• Records can be destroyed after treatment ends (within legal limits)

✅ Access to Specialized Therapists

Private pay therapists who:

• Understand medical training and culture
• Work with multiple physicians
• Respect unique pressures of practice
• Won’t pathologize normal responses to abnormal stress

Physicians experience:

• Emotional exhaustion: Feeling depleted after every shift
• Depersonalization: Viewing patients as problems instead of people
• Loss of meaning: Forgetting why you went into medicine
• Moral injury: Being forced to practice medicine that conflicts with your values

✓ Therapy helps you:

• Process the grief and anger of moral injury
• Rebuild boundaries between work and personal life
• Rediscover meaning in clinical practice
• Develop sustainable coping strategies

Physicians struggle with:

• Constant worry about missing something critical
• Rumination about patient outcomes
• Fear of malpractice litigation
• Performance anxiety during procedures
• Panic attacks before or after shifts

✓ Therapy helps you:

• Distinguish between adaptive vigilance and pathological anxiety
• Process trauma from adverse patient outcomes
• Develop cognitive tools to manage intrusive thoughts
• Address panic symptoms without medications

⚠️ Signs that substance use needs attention:

• Drinking or using substances daily to “decompress”
• Using medications not prescribed to you
• Colleagues expressing concern
• Recognizing you have a problem but feeling unable to stop

✓ Confidential therapy provides:

• Assessment and treatment planning that protects your license
• Referrals to physician-specific recovery programs
• Support navigating State Medical Board concerns
• Accountability without jeopardizing your career

Medicine takes a toll on personal relationships:

• Spouse feeling like a “medicine widow/widower”
• Kids who barely know you
• Emotional unavailability even when physically present
• Missed anniversaries, birthdays, holidays
• Resentment building on both sides

✓ Therapy addresses:

• Couples therapy to repair relationship damage
• Communication skills for medical professionals
• Boundary-setting with work demands
• Reconnecting with family despite schedule constraints

Physicians considering major changes:

• Leaving clinical practice entirely
• Transitioning to different specialties or settings
• Considering early retirement
• Questioning if medicine is “worth it”
• Feeling trapped by debt and expectations

✓ Therapy supports:

• Values clarification and life redesign
• Strategic career transition planning
• Processing “sunk cost” thinking about training
• Building identity beyond “doctor”

Trauma from medical practice is real:

• Patient deaths that haunt you
• Medical errors or near-misses
• Violent or threatening patients
• Malpractice litigation trauma
• Vicarious trauma from patients’ stories

✓ Evidence-based trauma treatment:

• EMDR for processing traumatic memories
• CPT (Cognitive Processing Therapy) for PTSD
• Prolonged Exposure when appropriate
• Skills to manage flashbacks and intrusive thoughts

Yes—and it’s worth it for the protection it provides.

Consider what’s at stake:

• Your medical license
• Your hospital privileges
• Your professional reputation
• Your earning potential over decades

💰 Many physicians can use:

• HSA (Health Savings Account) funds
• FSA (Flexible Spending Account) funds
• Payment plans for longer-term therapy

Most physicians continue working while in therapy. Virtual sessions mean:

• No commute time to/from appointments
• Sessions from home, office, or anywhere private
• Evening and weekend availability
• Flexible cancellation policy for genuine clinical emergencies
• Options to reschedule rather than lose sessions

🩺 We Understand Medicine

Therapists who work with attending physicians, residents, surgeons, ER docs, hospitalists, and primary care physicians

🔒 Confidentiality Is Default

No insurance companies, encrypted virtual sessions, minimal documentation, discrete billing

🧠 Evidence-Based Care

CBT, EMDR, ACT, Gottman Method, Motivational Interviewing—practical tools, not endless “how do you feel”

“I was terrified that seeking therapy would somehow end up in my credentialing files. Working with CEREVITY privately gave me the space to finally process years of burnout without risking my career. It’s the best decision I’ve made as a physician.”

— Hospitalist, Northern California

“After a patient died unexpectedly on my service, I couldn’t shake the guilt and second-guessing. EMDR therapy helped me process the trauma without needing medications that might have raised red flags during my hospital privileging renewal.”

— Surgeon, Los Angeles County

“My marriage was falling apart because I was emotionally checked out after every shift. Couples therapy helped my spouse understand the toll of medicine—and helped me learn to actually be present when I’m home.”

— Emergency Medicine Physician, San Diego

“I didn’t realize how much moral injury I was carrying until I started therapy. Being forced to rush through 30-patient days, denied prior authorizations for treatments I knew patients needed, constantly fighting with insurance—it was killing me. Therapy gave me a place to grieve the medicine I wanted to practice.”

— Primary Care Physician, Bay Area

Step 1: Reach Out Confidentially

We’ll have a brief, confidential conversation about: What you’re looking for in therapy, your concerns about confidentiality and licensing, your schedule and preferences, and which therapist might be the best fit.

Step 2: Schedule Your First Session

Appointments typically available within 3-7 days.

Step 3: Attend Your Session

Join via secure, encrypted video platform from wherever is private and comfortable—home, office, car, anywhere.

Step 4: Build Your Treatment Plan

After your first session, we’ll discuss:

• How often you’d like to meet
• What therapeutic approaches will be most helpful
• What your goals are and how we’ll measure progress

You’re allowed to struggle.
You’re allowed to be tired.
You’re allowed to question if it’s all worth it.
You’re allowed to get help—without risking everything you’ve worked for.

You don’t have to be in crisis to deserve support. You don’t have to be “broken” to benefit from therapy. The best physicians are the ones who recognize that taking care of themselves allows them to take better care of their patients.

Take the First Step:

Or visit our website: cerevity.com

✓ Private Pay (No Insurance) • ✓ No Diagnosis Required • ✓ Complete Confidentiality

✓ Virtual Sessions • ✓ Evening & Weekend Hours • ✓ Therapists Who Understand Medicine