"travel"

Some times the resources you need are not near at hand When you live in a smallish town and there are no nearby resources, it may be important to travel. This is not the worst thing in the world. Many people get into their thoughts both on the way to counseling and on the way back, which may actually be very advantageous. It is not optimal to have life distracting you fully immediately before and immediately after a counseling session. There is a lot of psychological "disgeting" that can be missed when this happens. Travelling an hour and a half before and after a session might just be optimal. It is mostly important that you not be dwelling on deeply depressing things on the way home and it is a nightmare to be locked in a car, fighting with someone, for an hour and a half drive. Avoid those two situations and a long drive to and from counseling can be very therapeutic.

credentials

Anybody can get some form of credentials (if they don't care what they mean). The issue is usually where the credentials come from and what the credentials really mean. I get emails every few months offering PhD's in almost anything by just applying and paying a fee. Generally speaking, credentials should be from a nationally recognized, respected organization or from a regionally accredited school of higher learning. The easiest credential to look for and check is a license. States license professionals and this assures you that you can count on at least a minimum level of education and training. These days you can also do internet searches about particular credentials and often find out just what those credentials mean.

Be cautious of (but if you have to consider) anyone with skimpy credentials -- and stay away from anyone with flaky credentials. Sometimes, especially in rural areas, choices are few and far between. Sometimes someone with a "lesser degree" (e.g., MA rather than MD or PhD) can provide really excellent services. A higher degree usually means they jumped through more hoops, read more books, wrote more papers, got more supervised training, but there are many good practitioners that simply didn't feel like devoting the extra several years for the extra prestige of a higher degree. That attitude doesn't necessarily correlate with ability as a helper and healer.