How much does depression therapy cost in Cincinnati?

Individual sessions at Lumenso Wellness range from $125 to $175 depending on your provider. We are an out-of-network practice and can provide a superbill for you to submit to your insurance for potential reimbursement.

Do you accept insurance?

We are out-of-network with all insurance providers. Many clients receive partial reimbursement through their insurance's out-of-network benefits. We are happy to provide a superbill so you can pursue reimbursement directly with your insurer.

How long does depression therapy take?

It depends on you, your history, your goals, and what's underneath the depression. Some people experience meaningful relief within a few months. Others, especially those whose depression is rooted in earlier experiences or chronic patterns, choose to go deeper over a longer period. We check in regularly and adjust together.

Do I need to be on medication to do depression therapy?

No. Some clients find medication helpful alongside therapy, others do not, and that decision is between you and a prescriber. We do not require medication, and we do not pressure clients in either direction. If you're interested in exploring medication, we can refer you to trusted prescribers in the Cincinnati area.

What's the difference between depression and just being sad or burned out?

Sadness is usually tied to something specific and tends to move through. Burnout is often a response to ongoing demands and tends to lift with sustained rest and change. Depression is more persistent, more pervasive, and often shows up without an obvious cause, or settles in long after the original cause has passed. If your low mood has lasted for weeks or months, doesn't lift with rest, or is affecting your ability to function, sleep, eat, or feel pleasure, therapy can help.

Can depression actually go away?

Depression isn't always something that gets cured like an infection, but it can shift, often significantly. Many of our clients reach a point where the heaviness lifts, where they reconnect with their own life, and where the patterns underneath the depression no longer hold the same grip. That kind of change is real, and it's possible.

Is depression therapy the same as regular therapy?

At Lumenso, we tailor our approach to what you're actually dealing with. When depression is the primary concern, we draw from modalities that go beyond surface-level mood management: IFS, EMDR, ACT, Jungian approaches, and somatic work, depending on what fits you. The framework adapts to the person.

Self-Esteem & Self-Worth Therapy in Cincinnati

For the voice in your head that's never satisfied.

Schedule a Free Consultation

You know the voice. The one that says you're not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough. The one that keeps score of every mistake and dismisses every success. The one that, even after the promotion, the praise, the relationship you wanted, finds the new thing to be quietly ashamed of.

You've tried to silence it. With achievement. With people-pleasing. With perfectionism. With approval from the right people. With looking the right way. With saying yes to things you didn't want to do. And no matter how loud the proof gets that you're capable, you're loved, you're enough, the voice always comes back.

That voice isn't your enemy. It's a part of you that needs to be understood. That's where therapy comes in.

What Low Self-Esteem Actually Looks Like

Low self-worth doesn't always announce itself. Most of the people who come to us for this work don't describe themselves as having low self-esteem. They describe the way it shows up:

Chronic self-criticism. A running commentary that finds what's wrong with you before anyone else can. The mistake from three years ago that still surfaces in the shower.
People-pleasing. Saying yes to everything because saying no feels too dangerous. Reading the room before you know what you actually think. Apologizing constantly for things that aren't your fault.
Difficulty setting boundaries. Letting things slide that bother you. Tolerating dynamics that drain you. Feeling guilty the moment you ask for what you need.
Imposter syndrome. The high achievement that never feels earned. The certainty that any day now, someone will figure out you don't actually belong. The way every accomplishment becomes evidence of how good you've gotten at faking it.
Perfectionism. The impossible standards. The procrastination that comes from fear of failure. The way "good enough" never feels like enough.
Social comparison. The scroll that ruins the morning. The friend whose life looks easier. The unshakable sense that everyone else figured something out that you missed.
Difficulty accepting compliments. The reflex to deflect, dismiss, or contradict when someone says something kind. The discomfort of being seen.
Staying in situations that don't serve you. The job, the relationship, the friendship that's clearly not right, and the voice that says you don't deserve better, or that you can't handle the discomfort of leaving.

If any of this sounds like you, it's not a personality flaw, and it's not just how you are. It's a pattern. Patterns can change.

Where Self-Worth Actually Comes From

Self-worth isn't built in adulthood. It's built early, and it's built in relationship.

It comes from being seen as a child, by parents who showed up consistently, who valued who you were rather than what you produced. It comes from being mirrored back to yourself in a way that said: you are good, you are loved, you are enough, without conditions. When that mirroring happens reliably, self-worth becomes the floor you stand on. It's not something you have to achieve. It's something you have.

When the mirroring doesn't happen reliably, or doesn't happen at all, the foundation gets built somewhere else. Most often, that "somewhere else" looks like:

Conditional love. Affection that depended on grades, behavior, accomplishment, or staying out of the way.

Critical or unpredictable parents. A childhood spent reading the room, managing the adult, hiding what would set them off.

Emotional neglect. Not abuse in any obvious sense. Just absence. A childhood where your inner world wasn't asked about.

Comparison with siblings. Being measured against another kid, sometimes openly, sometimes quietly, and always coming up short.

Bullying. Being told, by other kids or by a teacher or by a coach, what was wrong with you. Learning to believe it.

These early experiences install a particular kind of inner architecture. The architecture says: you are worth something when you perform, when you produce, when you please, when you stay small. You are worth nothing when you don't.

Adult life keeps reinforcing the original wiring. Toxic relationships. Workplace cultures that reward overworking. Social media that turns life into a comparison engine. The original message gets repeated until it feels like a fact about you rather than a story you absorbed.

Self-help books and motivational content can't reach this. Affirmations don't reach this. The voice in your head doesn't get quieter because you tell it to. It gets quieter when the underlying wound is met, understood, and finally tended.

That's what this work is.

Our Approach

We don't believe self-esteem is something you fix by trying harder to like yourself. The voice that doesn't like you has been working overtime for a long time, and it has a reason. The work is to understand the reason, not override it.

This is the heart of our self-esteem work. In IFS, the inner critic is not the enemy and it is not who you are. It's a part of you that took on a job, usually very young, of finding what's wrong with you before anyone else could. It's a protector. It learned, somewhere along the way, that imperfection meant rejection, and it decided it would never let you be caught off guard again. Underneath the critic is usually a younger part who carries the original ache, the kid who didn't feel loved, didn't feel safe, didn't feel enough. When that younger part finally gets met, with the kind of attention they didn't get the first time around, the critic's job changes. It stops needing to run the show.
Drawing from Kristin Neff's research-backed framework, we help you build the inner relationship that should have been built decades ago. Self-compassion is not self-indulgence. It's not letting yourself off the hook. It's the radical practice of treating yourself the way you'd treat someone you actually love, especially in the moments you're most convinced you don't deserve it.
Shame doesn't usually come from a vague feeling. It comes from specific memories. The moment a parent said the thing that stuck. The teacher who humiliated you in front of the class. The first time you understood that some part of you was unacceptable. EMDR helps your nervous system process those moments so they stop firing in the present, so the old wounds stop running today's confidence, today's relationships, today's sense of worth.
ACT helps you stop waiting until you feel worthy to start living. It teaches you to move toward what matters, even when the inner critic is loud, even when self-doubt is present, even when you don't fully believe in yourself yet. Action, in the right direction, often comes before belief.
For clients who sense there's something deeper underneath the self-criticism, something that symptom-focused approaches haven't been able to reach, Jungian depth psychology offers a different kind of access. This framework understands low self-worth not as a deficit to correct but as a signal pointing toward unfinished psychological work. In Jungian terms, the relentless inner critic is often connected to what Jung called the shadow: the parts of yourself that were pushed aside, disowned, or never allowed to develop. And the impossible standard you keep measuring yourself against is often a persona, a curated self built for the outside world, while the fuller, more complicated person underneath stays hidden and unvalued.

The work isn't about quieting the critic. It's about following what the critic is pointing toward. Through exploration of patterns, images, dreams, and the psyche's own symbolic material, this approach helps you move toward individuation, the ongoing process of becoming more wholly and honestly yourself. Yvette Nepper brings this framework to her work with clients navigating self-esteem, self-worth, and identity.

Who This Work Is For

Adults in Cincinnati, across Ohio (in person) , Kentucky, Minnesota, and Arizona (virtually), who are tired of the voice and ready to actually do something about it. Specifically, this work fits if:

You're high-achieving and quietly convinced you're a fraud. You're the helper, the rock, the one everyone counts on, and exhausted underneath. You can't take a compliment without deflecting it. You stay too long in jobs and relationships that don't fit because you don't believe you deserve better. You're a perfectionist who never feels finished. You're a people-pleaser who's lost track of what you actually want. You're in a body that other people seem to like, and you can't stand to look in the mirror. You're queer or LGBTQ+ and carrying internalized shame that affirmation alone hasn't touched. You've read every self-help book and the voice is still there.

You don't need a diagnosis to do this work. You don't need to be in crisis. You just need to be ready to meet the part of you that's been carrying this, instead of fighting it.

What to Expect

Your first session is a conversation. We'll talk about how the voice shows up for you, what it's been saying, what you've already tried, and what you're hoping for. You don't have to have it figured out. You don't have to perform your way through it. You can show up as you are.

From there, we build a plan together. Some clients start by mapping the patterns and getting curious about where they came from. Others go straight into the early material. Others want to focus on a specific present-day situation first, the job, the relationship, the spiral, and work backward from there. Your pace, your priorities.

Sessions are available in-office at our Cincinnati location or virtually across Ohio, Kentucky, Arizona, and Minnesota.

Drew Simri, LPCC-S, LICDC-CS

Yvette Nepper, LPCC

Sara Krueger, LPC

Learn more about our team

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Self-esteem isn't fixed at birth and it isn't a personality trait. It's a learned pattern built through early relational experiences, and it can be re-learned through new ones, including the therapeutic relationship itself. The work isn't quick and it isn't surface-level, but it's real. Many of our clients reach a point where the inner critic is still there sometimes, but it no longer runs the show.
It depends on you, your history, and how deep the patterns go. Some people begin to feel meaningful shifts within a few months, especially in how they relate to the inner critic. For deeper change, particularly when self-worth issues are rooted in childhood emotional neglect, conditional love, or trauma, the work tends to unfold over a longer arc. We check in regularly so you can decide what makes sense at each stage.
Self-esteem is how you evaluate yourself, usually based on performance, comparison, or external feedback. It tends to be conditional and unstable, high when things are going well, low when they aren't. Self-compassion, drawing from Kristin Neff's research, is how you relate to yourself, especially when things aren't going well. It's the steady inner stance of treating yourself with kindness, recognizing common humanity, and meeting your own struggle with care. The research is clear that self-compassion is a more sustainable foundation than self-esteem, and it's a major focus of our work here.
Low self-esteem isn't a standalone diagnosis in the DSM, but it's deeply connected to many mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, trauma, and relationship struggles. You don't need a diagnosis to benefit from this work. If self-criticism, perfectionism, or feeling not good enough is shaping your daily life, that's reason enough to seek support.
Individual sessions at Lumenso Wellness range from $125 to $175 depending on your provider. We are an out-of-network practice and can provide a superbill for you to submit to your insurance for potential reimbursement. For more details, visit our Rates and Payment page.
We are out-of-network with all insurance providers. Many clients receive partial reimbursement through their insurance's out-of-network benefits. We are happy to provide a superbill so you can pursue reimbursement directly with your insurer.

Ready to meet the part of you that's been carrying this?

You've spent enough time fighting the voice. The work from here is understanding it, meeting what's underneath it, and finally building the kind of self-worth that doesn't depend on the next achievement, the next approval, or the next mirror moment.