FAQ for potential clients
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Therapy focuses on exploring your internal world—emotions, history, relationships. Recovery coaching and case management are more action-oriented, supporting you with behavior change, accountability, and navigating complex systems like healthcare or mental health services. We often integrate these approaches based on your needs. A case manager or coach are not licensed and therefore cannot accept health insurance.
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Integration means "to make whole." In the context of psychedelic work, psychedelic integration is the process of weaving insights, emotions, or revelations from a non-ordinary state of consciousness—whether through ketamine, breathwork, or other modalities—into the fabric of everyday life.
It’s not just about understanding what happened during a journey; it’s about making meaning from the experience and allowing it to inform how you live, relate, and care for yourself. Integration might involve emotional processing, somatic exploration, creative expression, spiritual reflection, or tangible shifts in behavior and relationships.
At Wandering Heart Collective, we approach integration as a gentle, ongoing unfolding—not something to force, but something to tend to with curiosity, care, and courage. It's how insight becomes embodiment, and how transformation takes root.
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HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It’s a federal law that protects your private health information and sets standards for how your information can be shared or stored.
In therapy, HIPAA ensures that anything you share with your clinician—your name, medical history, session notes, and other personal details—is kept confidential and secure. We are legally and ethically obligated to protect your privacy, and we take that responsibility seriously.
There are a few exceptions to confidentiality (like if there’s a risk of harm to yourself or someone else), and we’ll talk through those clearly before we begin working together.
If you ever have questions about your privacy or how your information is handled, we’re always here to talk. Your trust matters.
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Harm reduction is a compassionate, non-judgmental approach to working with substance use and other high-risk behaviors. Rather than requiring abstinence, harm reduction meets people where they are—supporting safer choices, self-defined goals, and personal agency in the healing process. It’s rooted in dignity, autonomy, and respect, especially for those who have been marginalized by traditional systems of care.
In contrast, the 12-step model (such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous) is based on the belief that abstinence is the only path to recovery. It offers a structured, peer-led framework grounded in spirituality and accountability, and has been incredibly helpful for many people.
At Wandering Heart Collective, we honor both paths. We work from a harm reduction lens, which means we support clients in exploring their relationship to substances without shame—whether their goal is abstinence, moderation, or simply greater insight and safety. We can also help clients integrate 12-step work into therapy if that’s a meaningful part of their recovery. There’s no one “right” way—only the way that feels most true and sustainable for you.
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A somatic practitioner is a therapist or healing professional who focuses on the body’s role in emotional processing, trauma resolution, and overall well-being. “Soma” means body, and somatic work involves tuning into sensations, breath, movement, and patterns of tension or contraction as a way to understand and support what words alone may not access. Somatic practitioners at Wandering Heart Collective draw from various approaches—such as nervous system regulation, body-based trauma work, and experiential awareness practices—to help clients reconnect with themselves in an embodied, present-centered way.
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An AMFT is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist—a therapist who has completed their master’s degree in clinical psychology or a related field and is working toward full licensure under the supervision of a licensed clinician. AMFTs have extensive training and provide therapy with the same depth and care as licensed therapists. At Wandering Heart Collective, we view supervision as part of the relational fabric of our work—ensuring that care is both supported and held in community.
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Group work can feel intimidating at first—especially if you're used to navigating your healing alone. But it can also be profoundly transformative. Being witnessed, accepted, and supported by others on a similar path can create a sense of connection that individual therapy alone doesn’t always reach.
Group work might be right for you if:
You’re looking to feel less alone in your experiences
You want to explore relational patterns in real time
You’re curious about how others navigate similar challenges
You find insight and healing through shared stories and reflection
You’re open to giving and receiving support in a safe, structured space
Our groups are thoughtfully facilitated, trauma-informed, and grounded in consent and choice. You are never required to share more than you feel ready to. Many people find that even just listening to others can be deeply healing.
If you’re not sure whether group work is a fit, we’re happy to talk it through with you—no pressure, just a conversation. You don’t have to know for certain to be curious. Sometimes just showing up is the first step.
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Each practitioner within Wandering Heart Collective sets their own rates based on their training, offerings, and scope of practice. While fees generally range from $175–$200 per 50-minute session, rates may be higher for couples, family sessions, or extended sessions related to psychedelic work and integration.
For full transparency, we encourage you to visit the individual provider’s website or reach out to them directly to learn more about their specific fees, availability, and services. If you’re unsure where to start, we’re happy to help guide you toward someone who fits your needs and budget.
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Many of the practitioners within Wandering Heart Collective are out-of-network providers, meaning they don’t bill insurance directly. We know this can feel frustrating or disheartening, especially when you’re trying to access support—and we want to offer some context with care and transparency.
Becoming a therapist or healing practitioner requires years of education, thousands of supervised clinical hours, and ongoing training—much of which is paid out-of-pocket and not subsidized. In addition to this emotional and financial investment, insurance companies often reimburse providers at rates far below the value of their time, expertise, and care. Many also require extensive documentation, diagnosis, and treatment planning that can feel misaligned with relational and trauma-informed work.
By operating outside of insurance, practitioners are able to:
Maintain confidentiality and autonomy in how they structure care
Avoid the need to pathologize clients with a diagnosis to justify treatment
Set fees that reflect the true cost of offering sustainable, attuned care
That said, we never want finances to be the barrier to finding the right support. Many of our providers can offer superbills for potential out-of-network reimbursement, and some hold a limited number of sliding scale spots. If cost is a concern, please reach out—we’ll do our best to connect you with someone in the collective or beyond who can support you.
Healing should be accessible, and we’re committed to holding that tension with care.
FAQ for practitioners
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Wandering Heart Collective is a community of therapists, coaches, and somatic practitioners across California who share aligned values and a relational, trauma-informed approach to care. We each work independently, but we stay connected through referrals, collaboration, consultation, group facilitation—and the belief that healing is relational at its core.
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f you’re a licensed or pre-licensed mental health professional or healing practitioner who shares our values, we’d love to hear from you. Fill out the form on our Join our Collective page and let us know your areas of specialty, the populations you serve, and the kind of referrals or collaboration you’re open to. We aim to build a trusted, values-aligned network, not just a directory.It’s not just about understanding what happened during a journey; it’s about making meaning from the experience and allowing it to inform how you live, relate, and care for yourself.
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No. We welcome coaches, case managers, somatic practitioners, guides, and other healing professionals whose work complements the therapeutic process and is rooted in ethics, consent, and trauma-informed care. If you’re unsure whether your work aligns, reach out—we're open to conversation.
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Yes. We’re always interested in co-creating groups, workshops, or healing spaces that reflect the diversity and depth of our community. If you have an idea and are looking for a collaborator, or if you’d like to be considered for co-facilitation opportunities, let us know through the interest form.
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We receive referrals for a wide range of issues, but especially for:
Psychedelic integration
Trauma and complex PTSD
Addiction and recovery (harm reduction + abstinence)
Grief and ambiguous loss
High-control group or cult recovery
Chronic illness and cancer support
Perinatal and parenting support
Identity exploration, relational healing, and attachment work
We also welcome referrals from prescribers looking for integration therapists or KAP facilitators for their clients.
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No. This is a values-based network, not a paid directory. Our goal is to build community, trust, and alignment, not to monetize connection.
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We’re not looking for rigid commitment—we’re looking for relational reciprocity. That might look like responding to a referral with care, joining a consultation space, or simply staying connected and communicative. We understand everyone’s bandwidth is different.
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We’re intentional about building a community rooted in ethics, shared values, and mutual trust. If your work reflects a trauma-informed, identity-conscious, and relational approach, we want to hear from you.
Inclusion isn’t based on credentials alone—it’s about alignment, integrity, and how you show up with clients and within community. Because trust can’t be established over email alone, we prioritize meeting in person or over Zoom for a conversation before welcoming someone into the network. Sharing space, even briefly, helps us get a sense of one another—because this work is personal, and relationships are at the heart of everything we do.
We’re not looking for perfection—we’re looking for practitioners who are committed to growth, reciprocity, and showing up with care.