In the US: community mental health centres, sliding-scale directories, employee assistance programmes, and university training clinics.
In the UK: self-referral to NHS talking therapies, your GP, and voluntary sector services. Waiting lists are real — the free places to start are designed to be useful while you wait.
Some people have been dismissed, disbelieved, pushed too fast, or made worse. If that happened to you, it was not your fault and it was not inevitable.
A poor fit, or a poor practitioner, is not the same thing as therapy being useless. You are allowed to change therapist. You are allowed to ask how they work before you commit. You are allowed to stop.