53. How To: Move Cross-Country, Trial Therapists
(Epistemic status: hard-won personal experience; advice. Requested by PR and LW.)
How to Move Cross-Country in the US Without Losing Your Stuff or Going Insane
First, come to terms with the fact that this is going to be fairly expensive. Even if you have relatively few belongings, and don't have things like a large desk or bed to bring with you, you're still likely to spend upwards of US$1,000. The next thing to do is pack up all your belongings. If there's anything you plan to discard or give away, do that at some point during the process. For everything else, you'll want to go to a moving store like U-Haul both for boxes and for assorted packing materials, like newsprint, bubble wrap, dish boxes, and especially packing tape - get one more roll of it than you expect to need. You may also want to get colored tape, to color-code box priority; I recommend categories for low-priority, mid-priority, high-priority, and top-priority, in terms of when you should unpack the box and how important to you the belongings inside are. Put colored tape on both the top and at least one side. Finally, label your boxes extensively and in detail! You might think you'll remember what's in the boxes but I can almost guarantee you that you will not, and even if you do, that's added memory overhead when you'll already be tired and stressed out.
The next part is easy but expensive: actually getting yourself and your belongings from point A to point B. I strongly recommend the use of a U-Box. This is a service that U-Haul provides, where you give them a date, time, starting location, and ending location, and probably also hire a truck and movers. It's important to make sure that you have enough space at your starting location to accommodate a moving truck and a large box - about 8 feet tall. At the appointed day and time, the truck will arrive with the large box and the movers in it will load all your belongings into it. You might want to use a GPS locator, like a Tile or an Airtag, to keep track of any particularly valuable or sensitive belongings. Once you're done, make sure to keep the key to the lock they use on hand.
Now to get you to your destination, too. You have two major options: driving and flying. Both have upsides and downsides. Driving allows you to bring more of your most precious belongings with you, but will take longer (think about a day per time zone), be much more effort, and likely be more expensive. If you decide to go this route, make sure to plan out drive times, a route, and where you plan to stop for the night. Flying is faster, can be cheaper if you're lucky with airports or plan well, and is less effort, but means you'll be able to take far fewer belongings. For my move from Chicago to Philadelphia in late 2022, I chose to drive; for my move from Philadelphia to SF in mid-2025, I flew. Both worked out well, but then again I had to rent the car - I don't own my own. If you do own a car, you may want to drive.
Now for the last bit - unloading. If you've followed along until now, you'll have a U-Box delivery window. Pick a day, making sure that you'll be able to access your housing on that day. Once again, hire movers - this is no time for miserliness. This might be a good time to use a doorstop, if you have a good one. You'll likely want to use the U-Haul app, which has a fairly good selection of movers.
Last, take a long break. You deserve it!
How to Trial Therapists
First off, you'll want to have healthcare of some description. If you don't have that, I recommend getting some if you can - until recently, state-sponsored health plans were relatively inexpensive and they might become so again. Make a weighted factor model sheet with a few criteria you consider important - my go-tos include cost, whether they offer in-person sessions, how much I trust them, my felt sense of whether they're effective, and whether their techniques seem to match up well with me. As you go through the rest of this process, fill in and adjust entries in the sheet, eliminating any therapists who decline to continue for whatever reason.
Go looking for locally accredited psychologists - as of late 2025, Psychology Today is surprisingly good for the purpose. Pick out at least 3~5 candidates that seem promising to you. Message all of them with a polite but extensively informative outreach message. Have a good sense of what issues you want to address and what you might want to achieve; include that concisely in the message. You might also want to come up with a question for each candidate therapist, to see what they'd say in response to some poking at their frames and methods. Treat it a little like a job interview, if you like.
Now for the actual trialing. Therapists will generally want to have a 15-ish minute consult call with you before doing anything else. Be polite and as informative as you feel comfortable with, and try to get a sense of whether you'd be alright with working with this person, telling them some of your embarrassing secrets, and being generally vulnerable with them. If you get a bad feeling for any reason, you should probably not work with them, unless your sense of "getting a bad feeling" goes off basically constantly. Tell them up front that you're trialing multiple therapists. Fill in any additional details about what you hope the therapy will fix or address as well that you left out of the initial message.
Finally, therapists will generally want to have an intake session before you do anything more with them. I thus recommend having an intake session and a first session with each one. The intake will be fairly rote, and you'll probably start getting bored of them; that's fine. The first real session may be wildly different with each one; this is important data. Keep in tune with your gut feelings and your felt sense of trustworthiness, not just an intellectual sense of desirability or technique fit.
Once you're finished, you should have a fairly clear rank-ordering of the therapists you've spoken with, given the weighted factor model, plus or minus a little fudging. Pick the top option, thank the rest for their time, and get moving.
How to Move Cross-Country in the US Without Losing Your Stuff or Going Insane
First, come to terms with the fact that this is going to be fairly expensive. Even if you have relatively few belongings, and don't have things like a large desk or bed to bring with you, you're still likely to spend upwards of US$1,000. The next thing to do is pack up all your belongings. If there's anything you plan to discard or give away, do that at some point during the process. For everything else, you'll want to go to a moving store like U-Haul both for boxes and for assorted packing materials, like newsprint, bubble wrap, dish boxes, and especially packing tape - get one more roll of it than you expect to need. You may also want to get colored tape, to color-code box priority; I recommend categories for low-priority, mid-priority, high-priority, and top-priority, in terms of when you should unpack the box and how important to you the belongings inside are. Put colored tape on both the top and at least one side. Finally, label your boxes extensively and in detail! You might think you'll remember what's in the boxes but I can almost guarantee you that you will not, and even if you do, that's added memory overhead when you'll already be tired and stressed out.
The next part is easy but expensive: actually getting yourself and your belongings from point A to point B. I strongly recommend the use of a U-Box. This is a service that U-Haul provides, where you give them a date, time, starting location, and ending location, and probably also hire a truck and movers. It's important to make sure that you have enough space at your starting location to accommodate a moving truck and a large box - about 8 feet tall. At the appointed day and time, the truck will arrive with the large box and the movers in it will load all your belongings into it. You might want to use a GPS locator, like a Tile or an Airtag, to keep track of any particularly valuable or sensitive belongings. Once you're done, make sure to keep the key to the lock they use on hand.
Now to get you to your destination, too. You have two major options: driving and flying. Both have upsides and downsides. Driving allows you to bring more of your most precious belongings with you, but will take longer (think about a day per time zone), be much more effort, and likely be more expensive. If you decide to go this route, make sure to plan out drive times, a route, and where you plan to stop for the night. Flying is faster, can be cheaper if you're lucky with airports or plan well, and is less effort, but means you'll be able to take far fewer belongings. For my move from Chicago to Philadelphia in late 2022, I chose to drive; for my move from Philadelphia to SF in mid-2025, I flew. Both worked out well, but then again I had to rent the car - I don't own my own. If you do own a car, you may want to drive.
Now for the last bit - unloading. If you've followed along until now, you'll have a U-Box delivery window. Pick a day, making sure that you'll be able to access your housing on that day. Once again, hire movers - this is no time for miserliness. This might be a good time to use a doorstop, if you have a good one. You'll likely want to use the U-Haul app, which has a fairly good selection of movers.
Last, take a long break. You deserve it!
How to Trial Therapists
First off, you'll want to have healthcare of some description. If you don't have that, I recommend getting some if you can - until recently, state-sponsored health plans were relatively inexpensive and they might become so again. Make a weighted factor model sheet with a few criteria you consider important - my go-tos include cost, whether they offer in-person sessions, how much I trust them, my felt sense of whether they're effective, and whether their techniques seem to match up well with me. As you go through the rest of this process, fill in and adjust entries in the sheet, eliminating any therapists who decline to continue for whatever reason.
Go looking for locally accredited psychologists - as of late 2025, Psychology Today is surprisingly good for the purpose. Pick out at least 3~5 candidates that seem promising to you. Message all of them with a polite but extensively informative outreach message. Have a good sense of what issues you want to address and what you might want to achieve; include that concisely in the message. You might also want to come up with a question for each candidate therapist, to see what they'd say in response to some poking at their frames and methods. Treat it a little like a job interview, if you like.
Now for the actual trialing. Therapists will generally want to have a 15-ish minute consult call with you before doing anything else. Be polite and as informative as you feel comfortable with, and try to get a sense of whether you'd be alright with working with this person, telling them some of your embarrassing secrets, and being generally vulnerable with them. If you get a bad feeling for any reason, you should probably not work with them, unless your sense of "getting a bad feeling" goes off basically constantly. Tell them up front that you're trialing multiple therapists. Fill in any additional details about what you hope the therapy will fix or address as well that you left out of the initial message.
Finally, therapists will generally want to have an intake session before you do anything more with them. I thus recommend having an intake session and a first session with each one. The intake will be fairly rote, and you'll probably start getting bored of them; that's fine. The first real session may be wildly different with each one; this is important data. Keep in tune with your gut feelings and your felt sense of trustworthiness, not just an intellectual sense of desirability or technique fit.
Once you're finished, you should have a fairly clear rank-ordering of the therapists you've spoken with, given the weighted factor model, plus or minus a little fudging. Pick the top option, thank the rest for their time, and get moving.
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