# What do you look for in a therapist?



## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

Sorry about the really boring thread but what do you look for in a therapist when trying to treat SA and also overcoming past child abuse/family problems (I believe this is the cause to most my interpersonal issues)? What key words in their profiles/websites and approaches? Age/race (similar to you or entirely different) and background (education, past jobs)?

Also if you are low income (like me), how do you budget for therapy? It's becoming more and more apparent that I need therapy if I ever want a normal(ish) life and I'm willing to work extra hard and even forgo a lot of things at this point if it will help to any degree. I do have health insurance, but I made the mistake of signing up for ****ty coverage last year since I wanted to save money month to month. I also am currently seeing a psychiatrist that I am happy with but she only helps me with meds and suggested I see a therapist as well, which I agree with.


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## keysley (Mar 13, 2018)

Therapy never worked for me. I had a few and they all just wanted to give me medication after the first visit instead of help me dig deeper to find the cause and solve the problem. I used externally methods to overcome my social anxiety. I hope you can figure it out


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## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

keysley said:


> Therapy never worked for me. I had a few and they all just wanted to give me medication after the first visit instead of help me dig deeper to find the cause and solve the problem. I used externally methods to overcome my social anxiety. I hope you can figure it out


I already take medication so this comment doesn't apply to me. I plan to see a therapist that isn't cleared to prescribe meds or understands that I already see a psychiatrist.

I have tried many methods but unfortunately I keep running into a roadblock (events from my past) that I can't seem to shake. I don't expect a therapist to solve all my issues but I'm hoping to get a professional's opinion on this. At least if I try it the worst possible scenario is that I will know it doesn't work for me and try to learn from the experience


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## Discat (Mar 28, 2018)

Understanding
Great ideas
Someone I actually look up to at least a bit 
Likes me


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## Maslow (Dec 24, 2003)

She needs to be pretty. I get nervous talking to pretty women, so it acts as exposure therapy. It's also nice to have a pretty woman act like she likes me. :yes

All the advice they give you can be found in books and you can teach yourself.


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## WillYouStopDave (Jul 14, 2013)

I like the ones I can see through.


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## SplendidBob (May 28, 2014)

Ok, as someone who stumbled across an amazing therapist on the NHS (unfortunately its going to be ending before my **** is sorted, which sucks balls), but, I will be paying for therapy privately either immediately afterwards, or a few months down the line (see what I can blag free tho first eh?).

Anywho, yeh, I have some advice.

1. Ignore the people who say therapy doesn't work. It's the only thing that can actually alter personality to a significant degree imo, the people who say it doesn't work either have had sub standard therapy and don't realise it (usually), didn't commit to the therapy, or had the wrong therapy for their problems. It also isn't about "getting advice" from someone, or some such. Seriously, that isn't what therapy is, and you can't pick up up from a book. People who have therapy and expect the therapist to be some kind of wise sage that can give helpful advice, just no. It's about slowly adjusting your deep seated beliefs about the world and yourself, adjusting how you think, how you cope with emotions, healing old wounds, undoing psychological damage that was done to you, improving your personality, this kind of thing. It's so far from "getting advice" it isn't even funny.

2. Education of therapist. Most important thing to look for, also will ramp up the price, unfortunately. A higher level of education also means a higher level of intelligence. I have had a lot of therapists, and the only one worth anything was the one with 7 years of university education and maybe 5 years or so employed as a psychologist

3. What the therapist specialises in. If the SA is long standing, you have hypersensitivity to rejection, and avoidance extends beyond the social, you might be looking at AvPD which will be better dealt with by someone who specialises in personality disorders. Just re-read your post, child abuse / family issues is going to need someone who understands trauma.

4. Linked to 2, you ideally want a therapist who can draw upon a whole bunch of **** to get the job done.

5. After the first few sessions do you like them? Do you like the therapy? In no way should the therapy be "tough love", early on, imo you should feel good after the sessions. Later on it can get tough, but early on, you should like going. Give it a few sessions, if it isn't working, try someone else, imo. Maybe this is just how my psychologist dealt with me as an AvPD though (where establishing rapport and trust is vital, though I can't see how it wouldn't be vital everywhere else as well tbh).

6. You ideally want a psychologist, not a therapist, very different thing. Again, gonna cost though.

The rest, age / sex etc fairly irrelevant imo.


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## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

Maslow said:


> All the advice they give you can be found in books and you can teach yourself.


Yes but I can't think objectively about my own issues and outlook and don't have anyone I can talk to that I trust won't be an enabler (friends, services like hotlines/7cups) or someone who uses my issues to as a platform to attack and belittle me (family members).

It's one thing to have knowledge but it's another to know how to apply it to yourself/your situation. I find a lot of people lack self awareness about how they perceive + their outlook and even though I feel self aware I have to assume I'm no different.


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## Jagick (Mar 31, 2018)

They have to have gone through or are going through the same base issues I have, such as Depression and Anxiety. I need someone who knows the problem in order to understand it in order to help me with it. If the plane is going down and the pilot is out cold I want another pilot on the radio, not an optimistic train conductor.


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## neonknight77 (May 21, 2017)

Good looks of the opposite sex. Don't mind paying 50 cents on the dollar for that lol.


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## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

@splendidbob thanks, by far the most helpful post so far. I fear that I might be too stubborn or not brave enough to really dedicate myself to therapy, especially to methods like exposure... just the idea really scares me. But yeah I really want to try. Anyway your post was really helpful, I'll keep a lot of it in mind


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## birddookie (Jan 8, 2018)

@splendidbob Good post!
@roxslide You've got this.


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## SplendidBob (May 28, 2014)

@roxslide that's ok. If exposure is on the cards for you (and it may not be) it would be very gradual at a pace you could handle. By it's nature it isn't trauma inducing (that defeats the point).

But in terms of dedicating yourself to therapy, my advice would be to just try as much as you can, go in with an open mind and just see what happens (once you find a therapist you trust). It isn't (and shouldn't) be unpleasant, I look forward to my sessions, feel happier afterwards, even when it is difficult stuff.

The therapist should help you to commit to it all though, mine used whatever motivations she could find in me to get me on board (as maybe you can imagine, I am very stubborn ).


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## harrison (Apr 14, 2012)

I also think Bob's posts were very good in this thread - and that doesn't surprise me at all. He's mentioned that he's seen a number of them and has talked about his latest one quite a bit on here. I'll also take a lot of what you said to heart Bob.

I only recently started seeing my latest therapist again, but I'm already having doubts. (not surprising for me - like Bob I'm stubborn, very fussy, and I've seen lots of them before.) 

I know that I need to be much more proactive in even the type of therapist I see. That in itself can be slightly difficult, as convenience plays a part with this as well, at least for me. My latest psychologist (therapist) is an older man (about mid 60's), and used to be a scientist. He studied psychology as a mature age student and found that he loved it - he went on to do a Phd in it.

There's no doubting his intelligence - plus I like him, which is not always the case. Another thing with me is that he needs to be able to control the session, otherwise I will tend to take over. I've done that in the past with much quieter and younger therapists. 

The problem - or one of them - is that he mentioned recenty he has few other patients with bipolar disorder. I mentioned something that can happen with bipolar people ("blackouts" or loss of memory of events when they're manic) and he hadn't even heard the term. That immediately made me concerned. There's something else there too that I have trouble with, so I haven't seen him since.


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## SplendidBob (May 28, 2014)

@harrison actually rather interestingly my current therapist almost "lost me" right at the start, we were talking about my ocd and she said something that made me think she didn't understand it. I mentioned this to her and we agreed to simply ignore my OCD as it wasn't going to be the focus of the therapy anyway. I gave her a few weeks to see how things panned out and started to trust her a bit more (and its on the NHS so I had no choice anyway).

As it turns out, in the end of therapy my OCD has pretty much gone, I think that she was probably right all along lol and that in fixing something underneath (how I perceive things like OCD perhaps) it helped that as a byproduct.

It's hard to know what to attribute to therapy though. I would say that of the bits of therapy we did, exposure was the least important part, and probably the least successful. The difficulty there is that it seems like it needs to be continued *forever* or you regress backwards. That being said, I can still do everything I did via exposure (though asking random people for the time might be tough now), its just a lot harder than it was because the focus shifted from exposure exercises to trying to implement life changes so the avoidance started creeping back in on those areas. This may be an AvPD thing though, avoidance has woven itself into my core, it's just how I am now. Entirely possible I could get back to doing the stuff I was doing very quickly if I restarted the formal exposure exercises.

*What is fixed from my therapy:*
OCD, pretty much
Very good in interview style scenarios
Huge drop in anxiety across the board
Huge drop in avoidance across the board
Ability to hide anxiety
My true personality has come more to the forefront (this is interesting)
Greater ability to tolerate anxiety
Greater ability to tolerate discomfort
Greater capacity to act like a functional adult (less emotionally reactive).
Less care what others think
More assertive (esp with certain difficult people)
Less scared to go after what I want (even admitting some stuff to people was hard before).

*What isn't fixed from my therapy*
_My life_
My ability to converse
My avoidance (its always going to be there)

Now the italicised sucks balls, and obviously I am terrified I will not be able to make it on my own, but NHS time ran out. I think I could have pushed a lot harder in the second half of the therapy, I didn't make the most of it. Private is probably going to happen for me at some point.

Nonetheless, am a big advocate of therapy now, because the what is fixed is some fairly heavy duty stuff. Personality changes, very ****ing hard to make and it's like a whole bunch of junk got cleaned out of my mind.


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## Chevy396 (Jul 10, 2017)

I look for myself. The only way I've ever had a positive effect from therapy is when I designed it myself. I understand enough about neurology that I can throw that psychology mumbo jumbo out the window and get real sh*t done. In just the last year I was able to do something that apparently has cured my PTSD in a few months time.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk


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## Sasseth (Mar 25, 2018)

I look for a hug! ) XD


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## harrison (Apr 14, 2012)

splendidbob said:


> @harrison actually rather interestingly my current therapist almost "lost me" right at the start, we were talking about my ocd and she said something that made me think she didn't understand it. I mentioned this to her and we agreed to simply ignore my OCD as it wasn't going to be the focus of the therapy anyway. I gave her a few weeks to see how things panned out and started to trust her a bit more (and its on the NHS so I had no choice anyway).
> 
> As it turns out, in the end of therapy my OCD has pretty much gone, I think that she was probably right all along lol and that in fixing something underneath (how I perceive things like OCD perhaps) it helped that as a byproduct.
> 
> ...


Very interesting mate. You sound like you've really given therapy a decent shot - which I actually haven't. (there are a range of reasons for this - probably the most obvious one of which is my own laziness - and fear.)  It's not that I don't think it would necessarily work.

Interesting what you said about her not seeming to know about OCD. In my situation I guess I could handle it if my therapist doesn't know a lot about bipolar disorder - as that's not what I would really be there to try and "treat" - for want of a better word. He did mention at the start that he couldn't even see me unless I was on my medication - which I am now. (and as we've talked about before is a slight issue with me and can be quite boring.  )

One central problem with someone like me is that seeing someone in a therapeutic environment naturally puts them in a certain position of authority. This is okay if I like them and have a degree of respect for what they think - but if they try to give me advice that I don't agree with (on my life situation for example) - then I'm faced with a bit of a problem. I start to see *****s in his armor - so to speak.

As I said - I'm very, very fussy. (probably more than I should be because they're all only human and can't be perfect.)


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## harrison (Apr 14, 2012)

Not sure why it blanked out "ch!nks" - I guess it's a phrase the software doesn't recognise.


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## SilentFoxx (Apr 7, 2018)

I have actually called a therapist several times but now I'm avoiding him as well 😕


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## SFC01 (Feb 10, 2016)

I have only seen one for 6 sessions or so and to be fair, it was solely on looks - she was adamant I was to be her patient.


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## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

harrison said:


> Not sure why it blanked out "ch!nks" - I guess it's a phrase the software doesn't recognise.


Lol probably because it's a racial slur against Asian/Chinese people. But yeah it's a legitimate word too, that's kind of unfortunate. :/


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## harrison (Apr 14, 2012)

roxslide said:


> Lol probably because it's a racial slur against Asian/Chinese people. But yeah it's a legitimate word too, *that's kind of unfortunate.* :/


Yes, I realised not long after what had happened there - haven't heard that term for ages, which is definitely a good thing. 

Have you given any more thought to getting a therapist?


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## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

harrison said:


> Yes, I realised not long after what had happened there - haven't heard that term for ages, which is definitely a good thing.
> 
> Have you given any more thought to getting a therapist?


Yeah, I will probably wind up calling one this week. I'm still reviewing my options I guess. I'm also still trying to budget it, mostly nervous about that right now.

My job offers like 6 free therapy sessions so I also need to look into that but I am not positive what the terms are on where I get the therapy from.

Anyway I've read all the responses here and they've helped a lot on what to look for and managing my expectations, esp yours and bob's. Thanks!


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## aquariusrising (May 19, 2014)

Every “therapist” I’ve seen has been a horror story. My last one badmouthed me to the doctor and focused on meditation. Didn’t even touch finding the source of my issues. Laughed at a traumatic experience I had. Just was an utter jerk to me in other ways. The one I had before that abused my trust. Last psych didn’t think much of it. Just horror story after horror story. My last dr who was a jerk...said nastily and kind of blunt “it just doesnt work for you!” (Regarding me and psychs and councillors)... I have seen so many since I was a child I’ve lost count. Not one wasn’t bad or dodgy or did me wrong on some way.


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## SwtSurrender (Nov 24, 2014)

It doesn't matter to me who I see as long as I can open up and have them tear me apart so I can finally accept myself and just live my life. That's why I was always afraid but now I seek to be torn apart by mental health professionals, maybe they can open my eyes so I can see how unhealthy I lead my life. God I love this ****. You have to want to open yourself up and talk about your trauma with a mental health professional if you want to heal. Psychotherapy can be pricey, it can help if you force yourself to have a good insurance from a good job otherwise lay it all on your parents. Maybe you can find some group therapy groups through meetup.com as well. *wink *wink I went to one, it was full of babes.


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## JungHeart (Apr 11, 2018)

Look for someone who has a better bearing on your issues than you have.

Someone who understands your situation as opposed to someone who only tells you what you need to do. 

Someone who asks questions about your emotions so you can think about and experience them in new ways.

Someone who doesn't do that fake empathy head nod with a "mmm hmm"


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