If you’re listing your therapy practice on a therapist directory, or creating a website, you might be wondering how to write the best personal bio you possibly can.
In this article, we’ve explained how to create a therapist bio that clearly communicates who you are and what you do, helping attract new clients who are a good fit for your business.
We’ve also provided examples of therapist biographies that convert really well, to help you know what to look for.
If you’re looking for a quick sanity check of your marketing strategy as a therapist, or have any questions about getting more clients for your business, book a consulting call with me at a time that works for you.
Contents
- Step #1: Speak your audience’s language
- Step #2: Provide accurate, comprehensive information
- Step #3: Use simple, easy-to-understand wording
- Step #4: Use professional photos
- Step #5: End with a call-to-action (CTA)
- FAQs
- Examples
- Conclusion
Step #1: Speak your audience’s language
Arguably the most important aspect of writing a therapist bio is ensuring that you use language that engages your target audience.
As we explain in our guide to getting more clients as a therapist, the best counselor marketing advice we have is: niche down as much as possible.
For example, rather than saying you help people dealing with all sorts of different mental health issues, it’s normally better to position yourself as something like one of the following examples, depending on your area of expertise and interests:
- A relationship counselor who helps LGBT couples.
- A Christian counselor who specializes in helping African Americans.
- A therapist who helps executives and white-collar workers deal with anxiety and stress.
Niching down makes it infinitely easier to market yourself as a therapist, as it sets you apart from your competition, and allows you to use language that more effectively speaks to a specific audience on your website, social media, and directory listings.
Therefore, when creating your profile, you need to use language that is tailored to your niche.
For example:
- Use words and phrases that specifically engage people in your audience.
- Explain how you solve the specific types of problems that people in this niche face most often.
- Demonstrate how you are positioned to help people in this audience.
This can also extend to things such as using the formatting and tone of voice that is most likely to engage your audience, based on factors such as age and other demographic characteristics.
Examples
The following are some short bios, which show examples of how you can write for and engage a specific audience.
Therapist who helps the transgender community
“If you’re struggling to come to terms with your gender identity, experiencing transition-related stress, or finding it hard to express who you truly are, you don’t have to go it alone.”
“I specialize in helping transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse individuals with issues such as gender dysphoria, trauma, anxiety, and feelings of low self-worth.”
“I provide an accepting, affirming environment that allows you to be heard, and get the help you need. My approach is collaborative, and is focused on your goals, whether it be building self-understanding, reducing distress, or just wanting to feel more steady on a day-to-day basis.”
Therapist who helps Hispanic couples
“I specialize in helping Hispanic and Latino couples maintain, mend, and strengthen their relationship bonds. Whether you’re struggling with conflict, trust issues, overcoming infidelity, parenting-related stress, or other relationship issues, I’m here to help.”
“I’m a native Spanish and English speaker with more than seven years’ experience as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT).”
“Together, we can work towards your goals as a couple – whether it be developing coping mechanisms you can use when times get tough, improving communication, or working through conflict that has come up in your relationship.”
If you would like help working on your therapist profile, or your description specifically, including how you describe yourself on your website, book a consulting call with me at a time that works for you.
Step #2: Provide accurate, comprehensive information
On our counselor directory at Counseling.co, we’ve found that the vast majority of people make extensive use of filters to find the right therapist for their specific needs.
Choosing a counselor is a very personal process. Rather than picking the first person they see, most people spend at least 10 minutes filtering counselors based on their specialties, treatments offered, and more, to view different types of therapists available.
We have also found that bios that are not completely filled out are less likely to receive engagement, as they appear incomplete. This mostly affects those who do not upload a good-quality photo, but it is also true when other data points are missing as well.
Therefore, when creating or editing your profile on a directory, make sure to specify:
- Your qualifications and licensing.
- The areas of specialty you focus on.
- The treatment methods you offer.
- Insurance you accept.
- Pricing, if possible.
- Whether you offer online or in-person counseling.
- Your gender, and gender identity if you feel this would be applicable to your audience.
- Photos of you, and your practice if available.
If you’re creating a website, you want to provide the same information in a way that is easy to access and digest, and ensure it is consistent across any therapist directory profiles you have.
Apart from helping people find you more easily on directories, the other benefit of providing more information is it can help improve your visibility on search engines like Google and LLMs such as ChatGPT.
If information about you is unavailable, or is inconsistent across the web, you’re less likely to be recommended, because the search engine or AI may not have enough reliable data about you to surface useful information to the user.
In this case, the tool will likely recommend a different therapist instead, in order to be able to show a more complete or useful result.
Step #3: Use simple, easy-to-understand wording
As we mentioned in the first part, it’s crucial to speak your audience’s language, and adjust your tone of voice, wording, and phraseology based on who you’re writing for.
However, above all, you need to ensure that your language is simple and easy to understand.
It should be free of jargon, and accessible to people who have very little idea of what counseling involves.
Examples
Good
- I help clients destress, overcome brain fog, and improve mental clarity.
- I help couples work through problems that can sometimes arise in relationships, such as conflict, trust issues, and communication breakdowns.
Bad
- I use Cognitive-Behavioral and neuropsychological techniques to deliver a systematic approach to therapy.
- Using a collaborative treatment approach, I help clients differentiate symptom clusters, provide diagnoses, and formulate targeted, evidence-based interventions.
Step #4: Use professional photos
This may be common knowledge to many of you, but we cannot stress enough the importance of having professional photos taken.
Having a proper profile photo helps massively to improve trust in your professionalism, and with a skilled photographer, they can do a better job at showing you for who are, compared to using a photo you or someone else has taken.
If you offer in-person therapy as well, get some photos taken of your practice, as these can be a huge help when attached to your Google My Business listing, website, and therapist directory profiles.
We’ve explained more about Google My Business and website optimization in our guide to getting more clients as a therapist.
Step #5: End with a call-to-action (CTA)
This is a very marketing-coded thing, and it may seem a bit ridiculous, but it does work.
At the end of your biography, you should have a clear call-to-action (CTA) nudging the reader towards what you want them to do.
This is simple to implement, and just needs to be a single line or so, such as:
- Book a free 15-minute introductory consultation today, to see if we can help with the issues you’re struggling with.
- Get in touch over the phone or send us an email to learn more.
- Call (805) 999-9999 to book a free initial session, and see if we’re a good fit for you.
The point of this is just to make it clear what exactly the person needs to do next to get help.
On some therapist directories, there are many different ways to get in touch with a therapist, and it can be confusing for the user.
It’s useful to provide as much clarity as possible around what the next steps look like, which is why offering a free introductory consultation can be a powerful tactic, if you can do this in your practice.
FAQs
How much should I write?
It is normally worth using the maximum amount of text available on your therapist profile, up to the point where you do not have anything else you think is valuable to mention.
The worst thing you can do is make your profile significantly shorter than most others on the directory. This makes it look incomplete. But at the same time, you don’t want to stuff it with unnecessary words either.
If writing a website bio, 200-300 words is generally a good range, but again, you can write something a bit longer or shorter than this and it won’t cause any issues.
If the bio is on the longer side, just make sure to use short paragraphs, so it’s easy to read.
How should I open?
There is no right or wrong way to start off your therapist bio.
A good start will depend on your audience and personality – your writing should feel authentic to you, otherwise it won’t flow freely, and this could create a mismatch when you meet a client for the first time.
Here are some examples we quite like, in different formats, to give you some inspiration.
- Struggling with a loss of trust in your marriage? Wondering how you’re going to get through this without losing each other? Sometimes, relationships require mending, and I’m here to help with that.
- I help new mothers navigate the often-overwhelming thoughts and emotions associated with childbirth and the postpartum period.
- If you’re having a hard time going through the grieving process, I’m here for you.
Here are two examples we’ve seen that are suboptimal. The first one is difficult to parse and does not address who the therapist helps and how, and the second one is far too broad, making it impossible for a reader to think “this sounds like the exact person I’m looking for.”
- Dan holds a Master’s Degree in Professional Counseling and is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor – Certified Clinical Supervisor (LCDC – CCS), a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP), a Nationally Certified Intervention Professional (NCIP), and a Substance Abuse Professional (SAP) that has worked in the field of addiction recovery for a decade.
- I provide psychotherapy to individuals, couples, and families. My background is in existential psychoanalysis and I work with people with every type of issue you can imagine.
Should I use first, second, or third-person language?
We generally recommend using first-person perspective to refer to yourself, as this makes your profile appear more personable and warm.
You can use second or third person to refer to the reader.
For example, “I help patients overcome…” and “I can help you to overcome…” are both good, but the second one may read a bit strongly in some cases.
Are videos useful?
Yes – if you feel confident putting one together.
Just keep it short and sweet, explaining who you are, and who you help and how, about a maximum of 60 seconds in length.
Make sure to smile, and to shoot the video with a fixed camera (on a tripod for example) in a well-lit environment, with a non-distracting background.
You can often upload videos to your website as a YouTube embed, and some therapist directories allow them to be uploaded directly as well.
Which directories should I list on?
We recommend starting with free directories, such as our one at Counseling.co.
Apart from referring clients, being mentioned in more places online helps to build your credibility across the web, leading to greater levels of search traffic.
There are a number of other free directories you may be eligible for, depending on your qualifications. For example, the American Psychological Association has a directory for its members, though you will have to pay to join the Association if you’re not a member already.
Paid directories can be worth testing as well, but only continue with them if you are certain they are delivering results for your business.
What are the most common pitfalls?
We often see therapists make the following mistakes when writing their biographies or profiles.
- Talking about yourself in ways that are not relevant to the client. Limit it to your expertise, experience, and methodology. We have seen some therapists write things like “psychotherapy is a true passion of mine” for example.
- Emphasizing factors that do not differentiate you from other counselors. For example, placing your town or the state you service at the very beginning of the bio.
- Being too broad in your approach or the issues you help with.
- Using too much jargon.
- Introducing yourself by name – on directories, your name is shown elsewhere on the page, and there is no need to repeat it in the description. If you’re writing a website about page or homepage though, it may make sense to do this.
How do I know if my directory profile is any good?
First off, make sure you are consistently measuring where your clients are coming from.
Often, the simplest way to do this is to simply ask new clients how they found out about your therapy practice, after the first session.
Once you change your profile or website bio, if possible, give it three months to see how the changes have performed before updating it again. Otherwise, you won’t know what is working, and what’s not.
Make sure to update your bio when your qualifications, focuses, or treatment methods change, and keep it consistent wherever it is used across the web.
Examples
Here are some examples of our favourite profiles from our counselor directory, and what we would suggest to improve them.
“I specialize in working with women going through life transitions – this includes, but is not limited to: grief and loss, relationship challenges, family planning and fertility struggles, career changes, moving. All of these can cause stress, anxiety and even feelings of depression. I enjoy working with clients to help them find ways to thrive in these situations and feel better in their day-to-day lives.”
Jennifer’s profile is simple and to-the-point, with a good quality photo.
The description could be longer, but covers everything that needs to be said, and makes her specialization clear.
“I specialize in helping overthinkers and overachievers who struggle with chronic self-doubt and loneliness, including problems with anxiety/worry, depression, and PTSD/trauma. Using personalized, evidence-based psychotherapy, I help my clients work through their difficult pasts and deepest insecurities, so they can more completely understand and accept themselves, connect with other people more authentically, and learn to navigate the rest of their lives with a greater sense of calm, clarity, and confidence.”
Rachel’s profile is clear and concise, and uses extremely easy-to-understand language.
It could explain a bit more about her therapy approach, but we like this profile for how accessible it is.
“I have personal and professional experience working with trauma. I’m currently working to become an EMDRIA Approved EMDR therapy provider. I’ve learned that the past so often dictates our future distress, action, and inaction if we let it. I’d like to work with you to help you put the past behind you, and shift your perspective to the future.
I have a passion for working with teens and young adults to build their self-identity, confidence, and value system. I have experience working with all age groups, primarily with trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, attachment, and adjustment issues.
Every individual experiences difficulty and distress at some point. There is no shame in taking care of yourself by seeking counseling. Part of my practice is the option to meet via virtual session, making it even easier to fit wellness into your day. We will work together to create a personalized treatment plan based on your needs.”
Laura’s profile makes her areas of expertise and experience clear, and uses language that’s easy to digest. Everything important is covered, and her trauma specialization is well emphasized, which is great.
We would personally move the part about EMDRIA approval later on in the bio, as the average person may not understand its significance.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to create a great therapist bio, make sure to list on Counseling.co, which you can do here – it’s completely free of charge.
And remember, if you’d like a bit of help marketing your therapy practice, book a consulting call with me.
If you have any questions, leave us a comment below, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
