The Start of Therapy
Deciding to have therapy can be a very difficult decision. Maybe you made the decision yourself, or someone in your life suggested you have therapy, or someone in your life is insisting you have therapy.
Regardless of how you got to this decision, the next step is where to find therapy.
Should you see a psychiatrist, psychologist, psychotherapist, or social worker?
These all sound so similar, but each of these professionals has a different educational and practice background. Often your decision is based on factors such as what your health care benefits cover.
Next comes one of the hardest steps: choosing a therapist. In therapy you and your therapist will form a therapeutic relationship. Maybe the word relationship sounds intense, but this is the person to whom you are going to confide your personal and private thoughts and feelings, perhaps information you have never shared with anyone else. So, you need to be comfortable with and trust your therapist. It needs to be a good fit.
But how do you know whether the therapist you are choosing is going to be right for you?
Let’s take the example where you have therapy services available to you through your workplace’s Employee Assistance Program. You contact the provider, and they ask what you are looking for in a therapist, or they direct you to a website where you see photos and biographies of each therapist. You can use different criteria to filter through the choices – gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, experience. You can look at the photos to see who might stand out to you. You can read the biographies and see which therapist’s experience aligns with the issues you are struggling with.
I often compare choosing a therapist to dating.
You look over the photos and biographies to decide who will be best suited to you like using a dating app, or someone has recommended a therapist to you like a blind date. Some employer benefit programs allow you to have a short phone or video consultation with one or more different therapists before choosing. But the reality is that photos, biographies, and consultations are just snapshots of your therapist, and while you might have a sense in the 1st therapy session if they are right for you, it might take a few sessions for you to know for sure.
But how do you know if the therapist is right for you? What should you be looking for? This is a very subjective question as every client is looking for something different, and one therapist may be a good fit for one client but not for another.
Regardless of the specifics, I recommend you consider these questions when deciding if the therapist is right for you.
- Do you feel comfortable talking to them?
- Do they appear attentive and interested?
- Do they listen to you without judgment?
- Do they understand your concerns, needs, and goals?
- Are they compassionate?
- Are they personable and warm?
- Are they asking appropriate questions?
- Are they flexible or rigid in their approach?
- Do you trust them?
Therapy is a journey, and you are in the driver’s seat. Give yourself credit for being brave enough to start this journey, and realize there may be bumps in the road, but always remain hopeful that the destination will have made it worthwhile.
