What Am I Looking For in a Therapist?
In our last post, we discussed how to find a therapist. Today we’re going to look at the different ways that you can know your therapist is right for you.
This is a really tricky situation. Most people immediately judge based on criteria like education (are they a doctor?), numbers of years in the field (are they “new”?) or niche (are they a “specialist”?). I’m here to burst everyone’s giant bubble and tell you that while these things certainly give you information, they are not the key to knowing if a therapist is right for you.
The number one indicator of whether or not a therapist is YOUR therapist, is something called the Therapeutic Alliance.
Therapeutic Alliance is defined as “collaborative relationships between patient and therapist in the common fight to overcome the patient’s suffering and self-destructive behavior” (Ardito and Rabellino 2011). This is found to have three specific elements: 1. Agreement of goals of treatment 2. Agreement on tasks and 3. The development of a personal bond made up of reciprocal positive feelings. The third element is arguably the most important and is allows the other two to occur (Ardito and Rabellino 2011).
To borrow a phrase from one of my clinical professors in grad school (shout out Dr. Tommy Smith, Auburn University) “It’s all about relationships. Period.”. Why is this relationship so key? If you feel like your therapist genuinely cares about you, your well-being, and what happens to you, it allows you to also believe in the process of treatment and then engage in it.
If it’s about the relationship, then why is time spent in the field not an indicator of this? If the therapist has had more years in the field wouldn’t that experience translate in a better ability to build that relationship?
Not necessarily, to borrow an idea from another one of my clinical professors (Hey Dr. Scott Ketring, Auburn University) “Therapy is an art in that it does not matter if it is day 1 or day 20,000 of being a therapist, it’s really about your ability to connect with people”.
SO what might you as a client be looking for in order to have a good therapeutic alliance?
You might be looking for things like feeling understood, empathy, trustworthiness, skill, and a level of warmth. Alternatively, your therapist might be looking for things like, commitment to the process, participation, and showing up.
How many sessions should you give it to decide if you have a good therapeutic alliance or therapeutic relationship? This truly depends person to person. Hopefully you’ll have a good idea by the end of your first session if a good therapeutic relationship is in the cards for you and this therapist, it may not be fully developed yet, but you may see the potential. In this case, give it another two or three sessions to fill out and initiate a conversation around what else you may be looking for. If at the end of your first session you don’t feel like you got any of the things you’re looking for and you don’t feel comfortable bringing up your expectations, then that’s okay too! No therapist is the therapist for every person and you may need to try out another therapist to find the one that is the one for you. They are out there, I promise.
