What to Say When You Raise Your Therapy Rates

A 17-page therapist toolkit for communicating fee increases with clarity, warmth, and a firm professional boundary.

Raising your rate can bring up more than a pricing decision. Therapists often worry that clients will feel hurt, angry, pressured, or unable to continue. That anxiety can lead to over-explaining, apologizing, delaying the conversation, or keeping fees too low for years.

This toolkit gives you language for the conversation itself and practical support for the decisions around it.

17-page PDF · Instant download · $2.99

Use this when

• You know your rate needs to change but keep putting off the conversation.
• You want to tell current clients without sounding apologetic or defensive.
• A client asks why the fee is changing or pushes back.
• You need clearer sliding-scale limits.
• You want your email, fee policy, and in-session language to match.

What you get

• Therapist scripts for announcing a rate increase.
• Client-reaction language for silence, questions, anger, affordability concerns, and pushback.
• Sliding-scale language for holding limits without over-explaining.
• A rate-increase email template.
• A customizable fee-policy template.
• A decision guide for when and how much to raise your rates.
• A logistics checklist for updating your fees consistently across your practice.

Made for private practice

Created by Kristen McClure, MSW, LCSW, drawing on 31 years of clinical practice. The scripts are starting points: adapt them to your practice, policies, clients, and professional requirements.

For educational and professional support only. This resource does not replace clinical judgment, supervision, legal guidance, or applicable ethical and professional standards.