I pay out of pocket. I had health insurance (fairly unusual and privileged in the UK where most rely on the National Health Service) but they cut me off five months into seeing my current T for being 'chronic'. Ha.

I pay £120 a week for therapy. When the month has four Fridays, that's £480. When it has five, it's £600. My monthly income (total, not disposable) is £1,190. I can only afford to pay because I have a lump sum of money from an out of court settlement relating to negligent mental health treatment I received from the NHS when I was young. I try not to dip into this lump sum, but it's inevitable with half my income going on therapy, and rent, bills, food still to pay. When I do the maths it takes my breath away. The other day I looked up T's child's private school and realised that I (just one client) am paying 6 months of her school fees each year. When I think about my annual spend on therapy as a deposit on a house, as funding for fertility treatment to conceive... it really hurts. But I always come back to the truth, which is that without therapy to change myself and my life, I would be utterly miserable in that theoretical house, I would be unfit to parent that theoretical baby. When I came into therapy, I was so suicidal and my behaviour was so dangerous, it honestly looked likely that the lump sum would sit intact in the bank while I lay in a coffin.

I think that those of us who are lucky to have some resources do we do what we have to do to stay alive and give ourselves a chance at happiness. Not that it's easy, not that it doesn't hurt to think of what I could ('should') be doing instead, but I know for me it's the right thing to do.