Associate Training Program

We encourage a culture of curiosity, passion, fun, professionalism, and honesty. We believe that every one of us has experience and training that should be valued and respected in the workplace.

We also believe that every one of us has the ability to gain expertise and confidence to become a leader in the field. Whether you are searching for a drama-free place to see clients or you want to become the next Nedra Glover Tawwab or Brene Brown, we will listen to your career goals and help you on your journey.

We create an active collaborative culture by offering weekly opportunities for us to continue to grow as therapists and humans. Twice a month we have consult group, once a month we have clinical trainings, and once a month we engage in insight-oriented anti-oppressive work through facilitated conversations, readings, and exercises. We are a community of learners, and we believe in engaging through humility and curiosity.

Therapy is a craft learned over many years. It is more than learning modalities. We believe that the work of healing requires deep introspection, deep listening, deep joy, and deep repair. As therapists, we attune to our own nervous systems so we can become aware of when we become activated. We do the deeper work of noticing how our own trauma geneology and intersections of identities show up in the work. We learn how to notice survival bids with gentle kindness and curiosity, with a constant quest for unconditional positive regard. We are deeply skeptical of any mentality that encourages a feeling of righteousness, because we cannot be righteous and attuned at the same time. Healing happens in the messy bits, the in-betweens, the spaces were we can say "yes, and." We step towards nuance and complexity, legacy and context.

We had a lot of fun in designing a comfortable and welcoming environment. We'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

We don't work weekends. Many of our clinicians work 4 days a week.

We strongly believe in work-life balance (in fact, that's one of the founding principles of our practice! Clinicians cannot do the deep, transformative work of therapy unless they themselves are well-supported and not burning out.) We ask that clinicians be available to see 18 or more clients per week, with a cap at 30 clients per week. We work with clinicians to find a schedule that matches both their time needs and financial goals.

When choosing a schedule, the goal is to balance what clinicians need with what clients are requesting. In this post-pandemic era, we're noticing a lot of requests for after school/work, and a lot of requests for in person appointments. What does that mean for the schedule?

• We ask that for the first year of employment, each clinician work from the office one day per week. It helps us build a workplace community - plus, our office is within a few blocks of some excellent lunch spots and walking trails. If you would like to work in the office more than one day per week, that's great! After one year, you can transition entirely to telehealth if you'd like.

• For associates, we ask that each associate clinician work one evening per week (more is ok too - especially if you see teens or couples). One evening roughly means having 4 weekly spots after 5pm, so if you do that all in one day that would mean seeing clients until 9pm. We're also totally ok with spreading the 4 evening spots across more than one day (ie 2 evenings working until 7pm)

• For fully licensed clinicians, we ask that you EITHER work one evening per week OR accept some Medicare (not Medicaid) clients. There's a shortage of clinicians to see Medicare clients, and it's not "just" about aging -- people transition to Medicare at 65 years old. We work with folks who are exploring gender identity or sexuality, coping with a shift to retirement, starting new businesses, processing early childhood trauma, finally separating from that abusive partner -- everything. Working with Medicare clients is an excellent way to fill a daytime schedule and some of our Medicare plans have the highest reimbursement rates.

So...with those loose expectations, how much do you control your schedule? A whole lot, it turns out. For your telehealth/work from home days, you can work any schedule you want between the hours of 7:30am and 9pm, as long as you give yourself a break or two between clients. Most clinicians see 6 or 7 clients per day and see clients either 4 days a week or 4 plus a half day. Most clinicians also start out working more evenings because they want to fill up quickly, then slowly transition to more daytime hours as they are established.

We provide clinical supervision for all associates and for licensed clinicians who want to participate in our training program. Additionally, we offer group supervision opportunities and training opportunities (with CEU's) multiple times per month.

You can still apply even if you don't have experience providing psychotherapy. If you are licensed and want to transition to becoming a therapist, we ask that you participate in our training program for a year under an associate contract. Once you have developed the clinical skills for independent work, you would transition to the licensed contract.

Our group really specializes in training associate clinicians. We do occasionally hire fully licensed clinicians, but most of the time they are people who spent the first part of their career in medical social work or something other than counseling, and they now want to pivot to learn the craft of therapy. Because our focus is so much on training new grads, we aren't really set up for fully licensed applicants who aren't interested in the training program. Self-attunement ("What am I feeling when I'm in the room?") and deconstructing the coercive messages embedded within the mental health field ("Do I have to suppress my boundaries or overstep my capacity for the "good" of what the clients/agency/society needs?") are both huge parts of our training program; it's hard to help a clinician achieve that level of self-trust and insight without the time and intentionality of the supervision process. However, we are always looking for clinicians who have specializations that would add to the clinical depth of our practice - for example: perinatal mental health, eating disorders, working with first responders, etc. If you have a specialization that you think would benefit our group and you want to talk more about options for fully licensed clinicians, please submit an application so we can discuss opportunities.

Yes, absolutely! For clinicians who are two years post-licensure, there are opportunities to provide clinical supervision. Also, we are absolutely thrilled to support clinicians who would like to either become the clinical supervisor of their own location or own their own group practice. For more information, see our Group Practice Incubator Program.

When we decided to launch Catalyst, we spoke extensively with attorneys to make sure we were creating an ethical and mutually beneficial arrangement. There are some models for group practices that are more explicitly legal than others. Of the other group practice models, going through the legwork to become an employer allowed us to practice within our ethics and provide many of the other benefits that we feel are vital in creating a good work culture.

Yes, we will sponsor our employees for H1B and/or a Green Card. We ask that a clinician have the ability to work legally in the US for the first two years of their work with us. Most of the time that's via a F1 visa from a STEM program, the visa issued to new graduates of US-based schools. We understand that many programs are not STEM and therefore have only one year of work authorization. If you only have one year of OPT, please be able to talk about how you plan to maintain your work authorization if you aren't selected for the first year of the H1B lottery.

It's important to us to put a percentage of our profits towards making people's lives better. We could donate to service organizations in the traditional way, but committing to sponsorship seems like a more direct way of changing people's lives (both the clinician and the many people they help). Plus, it's also selfish -- we get to have some truly amazing people on our team who wouldn't be able to join us if we couldn't sponsor.

Please note: we understand we are living in a time of considerable change and uncertainty, particularly regarding the US immigration system. We are committed to sponsorship and we work with our immigration attorenty to advocate for our employees.

Update 9/19/25: we are watching the news regarding the proclamation that will charge employers $100,000 to sponsor an H1B visa. Obviously that is completely untenable for a small business, but we remain hopeful that it will be challenged in the court. Immigrants make our communities better. Even if we are ultimately unable to sponsor H1B visas, we will still plan to sponsor green cards for our employees.

For fully licensed clinicians, we offer a 50% split which is standard for an employee-based group practice. This is less than the 60% split of an independent contractor relationship, because we provide substantial benefits and pay employment taxes.

For associates, we offer a 45% split and we provide free supervision toward licensure (actually we pay you to attend supervision sessions). Associates are eligible to transition to a new contract once fully licensed.

Our reimbursements for individual therapy range from $112 to $140/hour, depending on the insurance plan. Our norm is for 53-minute sessions, but if a session is shorter then the reimbursement will be less. For couples or family counseling, the reimbursement is based on your level of experience doing couples/family counseling and the time of day of the session.

So...let's math! Because we aren't allowed to publish the exact contracted rates for insurance companies (they don't like that), we'll use an average of all the insurance reimbursement rates: $126.93/session. Let's calculate the income based on seeing clients -- this is for an established clinician, not someone still ramping up (ramp up note below). This math doesn't include additional income from non-clinical time, visibility bonuses, etc (which is a small percentage of income).

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Example 1: A clinician schedules 25 clients a week, and 3 cancel per week on average. This clinician takes 2 weeks of vacation per year. Their gross income would be:

Associate: $62,832/year or $5236/month

Fully licensed: $69,806/year or $5817.17/month

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Example 2: A clinician schedules 30 clients a week, and 3 cancel per week on average. This clinician takes 2 weeks of vacation per year. Their gross income would be:

Associate: $77,112/year or $6426/month

Fully licensed: $85,671/year or $7139.25/month

If they take a month of vacation per year, their gross income would be:

Associate: $74,027.52/year or $6168.96/month

Fully licensed: $82,244.16/year or $6853.68/month

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This isn't a salary position, though. Sometimes insurances take a while for insurances to pay, so there could be a $2,000/month range in gross income in any given month. Sometimes clinicians have a higher percentage of clients with high reimbursement rates, or they see couples, and their overall average reimbrsement per session is higher. There are also times when the rate of cancellations are higher (August, the last 2 weeks of December).

We are committed to finding excellent therapists who are a great fit for our practice. We can be as creative as needed about a transition plan. Some clinicians find it easier to slowly step down from their current position (or tactically take vacation days) as they build up their caseload with us.

Because we are primarily an insurance-based practice, there can be a longer ramp up period. For the first month, the majority of your income will come from training and onboarding hours as you build your client caseload. Expect several months for income to increase to the averages quoted for the full caseload above.

For example, if you see a client on May 27th and they have a $20 co-pay, then you can expect the $20 to be included in the payroll for May (paid June 15th). Then the claim gets sent to insurance, and the remainder will likely be paid a few weeks later in the middle of June -- so the rest of it (based on the average, $106.93) won't show up until the June payroll (paid July 15th).

Some people expect that they can make more money as a solo practitioner rather than an employee. However, there's a lot that goes into running a business, and most people don't factor in the hours devoted to business management when they try to factor in which way is more profitable. There's an excellent article that discusses this:

"What is rarely taken into account is overhead hours worked. Anyone in private practice will work some overhead hours (that is, hours beyond seeing clients). But because they are unpaid hours, many clinicians don’t take the time to factor in those hours worked and calculate that into their pay.

One major benefit of employment in a group practice, is that most employees have a minimal amount of overhead work. On average, for every 20 hours of client sessions, a clinician in a group practice will work an additional two hours of overhead work (ie. notes, collaboration, and in some cases, marketing).

A solo practitioner is a business owner. That means they are managing all aspects of their business on top of seeing clients. A typical solo practice owner will spend around 12 hours a week marketing, networking, doing notes, collaborating, maintaining a website, social media, answer phones, manage billing, communicate with accountants, search for office space, just to name a few."

--Maureen Werrbach

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In general, a group practice is a better fit if you would like to spend the majority of your time and effort working with clients. A solo practice is a better fit if you would like to spend part of your time and effort seeing clients, and part of your time and effort on running the business. There's no one right path - it depends on the kinds of work you enjoy.

We offer paid sick time, health insurance (for full time clinicians), paying for advertising and marketing, and a CEU fund. We also pay clinicians for networking such as blog writing and public speaking.

Yes - we offer medical (and now dental!) insurance for clinicians with a full caseload. Catalyst uses Regence employer insurance; it covers medical, dental and vision.

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You must work an average of 20 hours/week in order to qualify for insurance, and this can include client and non-client hours such as trainings, marketing hours, etc. Catalyst will pay for half of the premium as long as you're seeing an average of 12 clients per week over a 3 month period. The next tier is if you start seeing at least 22 clients per week on average over a period of 3 months --- then Catalyst will pay the full premium amount and you would no longer be responsible for any of the premium. You are welcome to cover your dependents, but you would be responsible for their premium.

If opting out of using our health insurance, you'd automatically get the cash bonus system toward your own insurance (if averaging 12 clients over 3 months you'd get $150 bonus, if averaging 22 clients you'd get $300). The monthly cost of the health insurance is higher than the cash reimbursement.

No. Catalyst provides rent, marketing, attorney-vetted disclosures, and completely vetted HIPAA compatible tech (electronic health record, email, encryption, fax, etc). We also provide Chromebooks and other office supplies for each clinician.

Catalyst provides insurance billing and all related phone work. You just email our biller if you encounter a problem or question. Associate clinicians don't need to panel - associates are nested under our group. For licensed clinicians, we help with paneling, although to get started, there are some forms that really only you can fill out.

You are responsible for paying for your professional license, malpractice insurance, any professional memberships, and your outside CEU’s. (Catalyst offers CEU credits for our trainings and those are free to staff). We offer a CEU fund based on how many clients you see on average.

Yes. We provide all payroll services. You do not need a business license because you would be an employee.

It depends. Some of our clinicians do other clinical work while working at Catalyst. This includes teaching, equine therapy, in-home visits, running groups, or having a side business as a clinical supervisor. However, providing in-office therapy in another setting is not part of our model, with limited exceptions.

We are in a small wheelchair-accessible professional building in downtown Woodinville. We are within walking distance of downtown Woodinville and about a dozen cute and trendy lunch/dinner spots. Ample free parking is provided.

At Catalyst Counseling, our clinical training program offers an exceptional foundation for developing therapeutic skills.

• Participants will gain in-depth knowledge of various therapeutic modalities and techniques, enabling them to offer tailored treatment approaches.

• Our program emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting your nervous system, an essential skill for effective therapeutic practice.

• We help you deepen your self-confidence, learn to read your nervous system, and draw from your own wisdom.

• We emphasize sustainability in your practice, ensuring that the skills you acquire are long-lasting and beneficial.

• We teach creativity, playfulness, and agility in the therapy space, enabling you to deepen your therapeutic work and have a lot of fun.

This comprehensive training prepares you to excel in a therapeutic career, equipped with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Join us to enhance your therapeutic abilities and make a meaningful impact in your field.