Credentials are no substitute for talent. You'll know instantly whether or not they are on your wavelength.
My wiring is Visual (AD/HD)-Kinesthetic-Auditory. Unfortunately, academic success requires auditory neurological wiring. Therefore, the very fact of any therapist having a degree is an automatic disqualifier for effectiveness in providing me any talk therapy, as degrees have no potential for rapport with me. (If you're 100% auditory, you can easily become a Rhodes Scholar with an IQ of 95. But if you're 100% visual or 100% kinesthetic (dyslexic), then an IQ of 200 will not be enough to save you from being labeled with Down's Syndrome children.)
If you had any measure of academic success, then there might be some therapeutic potential for you to be offered by a degree.
No question in my experience that most females are vastly superior listeners to most males.
Personally, I confine myself to psychopharmacy with compliant prescribers, as medications are the only thing that have ever helped me. I fully understand that pills are not skills, but while I would be more than eager to try an intensive course of biofeedback therapy, there has never been a single Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) or Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) credentialed practitioner within 50 miles of my area who is an insurance provider for my coverage going back to 1969. (If a treatment is effective, like Single Session Therapy or biofeedback, then there is no money in it for them. These people are parasites who extract their living by preventing their victims from getting better, and often by making them worse. My former psychiatrist made tens of thousands off my coverage over a span of 18 years before retiring to live high off the hog, not giving a shit about the dependent clientele she left in the lurch. My current psychiatrist however is a septuagenarian professor emeritus who makes a salary from his current agency, a fine gentleman who stopped accepting new patients shortly after taking me on in 2014. Sleep medication management and maintenance every six months is the focus of our association.)
Aside from biofeedback, clinical hypnosis might be a worthwhile modality to pursue, assuming you are fortunate enough to locate a competent practitioner. Again, a degree is no substitute for competence and talent. (Incidentally, my psychiatrist agrees with me that Dave Elman, somebody with an eighth grade education who died in 1967, is history's greatest hypnotist. Ironically, Elman only taught clinical hypnoanesthesia and other methods he developed and perfected to physicians and dentists. The Amazing Kreskin, the noted mentalist entertainer, is second on my psychiatrist's list of the greatest ever in this field, while Milton Erickson just cracks his top five, the only degree, let alone medical doctor who rates that highly.)
It takes time finding the one. For the first few sessions, I'd say get to know them. You don't have to open up right away. Talk about your interests, what you did on the weekend, anything.
