# I'm getting a new therapist



## The Condition of Keegan (Feb 1, 2016)

So...I finally made a choice on if i should get a new therapist or not...my answer, is yes...I'm gonna get a new one. Why though? Well, here are the reasons:

1. I have not heard from her in a week, she has not let me know when I could see her again...I'm supposed to see her every week but this is second time this has happened in the last month.

2. I don't feel different coming out, I end up feeling the same. I vented about my father once and after that session, I came out feeling angry. And some of the other stuff I've told her about...I don't feel it's helping me, so I don't feel different when I see her. I mean, I've actually done things that...havent really come from her. Like I took a walk to the store for the first time and that wasn't cause of her, I felt pretty normal in Walmart one time, felt like I was myself and that wasn't cause of her...and her advice never...helps me. I don't feel different, just...the same.

So, imma get a new therapist...I've been there for at least 6 months now and i feel...almost the same really, my depression has died down a bit but I mean...I still have really bad SA and still have this depression walking around inside my brain.


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## The Library of Emma (Mar 3, 2016)

sounds like this was a difficult decision to make, but good for you. If she wasn't helping you make progress then she wasn't doing her job.

Best of luck with finding someone new


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## kookzie (Nov 2, 2007)

Sorry to hear things didn't work out between you and your therapist. I can certainly sympathize. I personally went through six different therapists, having made little progress. Each time I ended the relationship I would feel more disheartened, like it was my all my fault. I thought: "If I can't even have a positive relationship with a therapist, what hope do I have with ordinary people?"

The one constant with previous therapists was that I wasn't properly vetting them. Like any profession there are good therapists and there are bad therapists. My responsibility as a patient and customer was to find the one that fit me best. But up until then, my sole method of vetting was looking up their ratings on different websites. This would give me a vague notion of their quality, but not enough to make a sound judgment. If they had higher than four stars or whatever and were conveniently located, I would call them up and make an appointment. What should only be used as the first "filtering" phase was a phase I didn't get past.

That was until I began my search for the seventh therapist. This time I made sure to switch things up. I used the 15-minute interview call that most therapists offer prior to the first appointment (if they didn't offer this, I didn't even bother with them). So instead of having to go to the first appointment to discover whether or not we were a good fit, I could get a pretty decent picture just over the phone. Not only did it save a lot of time, but it gave me a sense of myself as a discerning customer shopping around, instead of simply being a will-'o-the-wisp floating from one therapist to another. The former is empowering, the latter is aimless shuffling.

I recommend having a good idea of what you want to get out of your relationship with your therapist. What are your goals, what are the problems preventing you from achieving them. You know, basic self-assessment stuff. You may even be surprised by what comes up. Develop questions based around these things. And pose them during your interview call. For example: "What would our first appointment look like? Where would we go from there?", "What's your experience with 'xyz' therapy model?", "How do you evaluate symptoms?". You can even get philosophical and just ask general questions. "How do you view family history in its affect on one's psychology?", "How much stock do you put in dream analysis and talk therapy?", "How clinical is your approach, and do you see it as a treatment session?"

This approach helped me land my seventh psychologist, who is one of the wisest men I'd met in my life, and a very positive male role-model.

Happy hunting!

PS A cool piece of advice I got from someone and never forgot is choose the gender of your psychologist based upon the gender of parent you had the more worse relationship with. I had a bad relationship with my dad. He neglected a lot of his parental responsibilities, and taught me pretty much nothing on how to be a man -- quite the opposite he taught me a lot of bad habits. So I made sure my seventh psychologist was a man.


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