How To Find A Therapist Who Is Right For You.
(It Can Feel
A Lot Like Dating)
You have decided it is finally time to “talk to someone” and find a therapist. You’ve never been that person before, who has made the call to set up an appointment with a counselor, and you’re super anxious. How do you go about finding a person that is a good fit for you?
After all, even within the first session, you’ll be baring your soul and sharing deeply private information with this person.
First, perhaps you’ll notice that the title refers to “a” therapist, not “the” therapist. This is because there certainly may be many counselors who could be a perfect match for your mental health or relationship concerns. It can feel a lot like dating—no one person is necessarily perfect, but you want to know the values, the experience, and the availability of that other human.
Let’s talk about some of the factors that can be included in the matrix of therapist attributes as you are searching:
Gender of the therapist
Issues the therapist treats
Populations served (individuals, couples, adolescents, etc)
Location in which the counselor is licensed
Virtual or In-person sessions
Educational level and certifications
Specialties and focus
Insurance-based or Private Pay, as well as the cost
Considerations of ethnicity, sexuality, faith-based, etc.
Availability
Reviews
It is important to determine your priorities for therapy as you set out to find the right one. Good therapists often narrow down their specialties so that they can hone their skills and knowledge to be an expert in a certain group of topics or needs.
If you need an expert in toe surgery, it’s not really wise to make your appointment with the kidney doctor. Therapists are also specialists in their own areas.
What service of the counselor is most beneficial to you at this time? Perhaps you need addiction and recovery support before you would benefit from marriage counseling, or maybe you would like to work through a time of grief before you work on your ADHD. You may be looking for faith-based counseling because this is most important to you.
In addition, competence in a certain area takes time, experience, and years of training and supervision. A brand-new counselor may be receiving supervision from a more “seasoned” therapist, and that’s always a good thing to know. What a benefit, to have two sets of eyes and ears to make sure you are receiving the best treatment. On the other hand, a provider with more years of clinical experience as well as life experience can be a stabilizing experience. You may even find that a “new” counselor could be an older individual with much wisdom to offer!
Even within a certain specialty, a therapist may have chosen to be trained in and offer a modality within that specialty. An example from my own practice in Maryland is that, although I am a couples counselor, my modality is from an Emotionally Focused Therapy perspective. That is, I offer couples a chance to discover and change the emotional cycle they get stuck in; I’m not so much the kind of couples’ therapist which offers concrete “skills” and homework. Not every modality is for every person seeking therapy.
Another example might be that a therapist who treats folks who’ve had trauma in their lives may approach the work using EMDR, narrative therapy, exposure therapy, or cognitive-behavioral therapy. Which one is right for you?
Once you’ve thought through the list above, and determined which characteristics are important to you, you can find out even more about the therapist or their fit for your needs by doing a search on one of the many therapist search platforms. Those include Mental Health Match, Therapy Den, Psychology Today, Christian Counselor Directory, Clinicians of Color, and many more. Specialty websites often include a therapist search as well, for example
International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy
or
EMDR International Association.
It can be beneficial to make a list of 5-10 therapists that check the boxes that are important to you, and then start contacting these counselors. Keep a list of whom you’ve contacted, because it’s easy to forget who’s who once you get started. Many counselors will offer a free consultation call to hear about your hopes for therapy, and some therapists will have waiting lists for future availability. (Unfortunately, many on your list may not even call you back. This seems to be a reality in the busy times of COVID-19.) A zoom consultation call goes a long way to be able to sense a good connection between two people.
One more consideration is whether you prefer to meet in the office or via a secure tele-health platform. Many therapists are licensed in multiple states (for myself, Maryland and Delaware) and can effectively provide mental health counseling virtually. The cost of gas, the cost of getting a babysitter, and the time it takes to travel all make tele-therapy a money-saving option.
Finally, many counselors have websites (see the author’s here) or google profiles which offer far more detailed information than a search engine or therapist listing. You may find specialty pages which tell you about the therapist, photos of the office space, blogs which the counselor has written, even pertinent facts about where to park or what the practice hours are. Look for links to therapist websites on the therapy search directories, or even in a google listing for that person or practice.
Hopefully, you’ve got a good direction to head when looking for a therapist who is a good fit for you. Know yourself, and you will have a head start on knowing who to contact for therapy.
Warm wishes as you head into this uncharted territory!