Finding a psychotherapist or even going about searching for one can seem like a very confusing and daunting task. Due to the specific nature of the field, often people find it most helpful if they are personally recommended a professional by someone they know, as this significantly helps with trust. However, this is not always a possible solution for everyone. In this section I will try to offer some key information about what are the most important things to take into account when choosing a psychotherapist and offer some practical ideas or solutions on how to go about this.
There are three key aspects to consider when making your choice – they concern choosing a type of therapy (domain or school of thought); safety & professionalism and fit.
Type of therapy
First you need to decide which one of the 3 main types of currently available treatment options would be most appropriate for you, in your current circumstances (for more information on these see Treatment Options). If still unclear which of these you should turn to, your GP should be able to help advise you in your best course of action, while you should also be able to book an assessment or initial consultation meeting with a professional from any of the 3 domains and openly ask to discuss which domain of treatment is the most suitable for your specific case.
If you are specifically interested in CBT or in psychiatry for medication you are best advised to turn to their professional websites within your country and chose a therapist from their official lists of accredited professionals.
If, though, you are interested in a type of Psychotherapy, or a Talking therapy, choosing a particular type of therapeutic domain can be very daunting, as there are a number of therapies and schools of thought – comparing through all of them in order to make your choice might be a rather impractical and even impossible task. If you just happen to know what type of modality you are particularly interested in, you can look for a therapist on the official website of that particular therapeutic school in your country. If not, though, you should not at all be worried, as broadly speaking these varies therapies generally share much more in common, then as a difference to one another.
In addition to that, research on treatment outcome persistently shows that a stronger key factor for the treatment success appears to be the therapeutic relationship with the therapist, rather than the particular therapeutic modality. Therefore, if no specific modality interests you, you can simply turn to the websites of the national Psychotherapeutic professional associations, which usually have long lists of psychotherapists from a number of various modalities, registered with them as fully licensed and accredited professionals, and from which list you can safely chose a professional to your preference. For example, for the UK such professional associations are the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) or the British Psychological Society (BPS), but each country has its’ own professional association, which is usually quite straightforward to find online. Therefore, if you have no preferred modality, you can simply do a search of the accredited therapists available around you or within a more convenient travel distance from yourself or who offer online treatment if this is what you prefer.
Safety & professionalism
Psychotherapists are largely people who are in this field of a helping medical profession as they are interested in people and genuinely care about their well-being and want to help. Nevertheless, they are humans much the same, and thus among them there might be few, who do not quite adhere to the Ethical Standards or levels of professionalism generally required in the field.
The field of psychotherapy can occasionally be under special danger, as various people who do not have the same required level of education or training start advertising themselves as “therapists” and implying they can work with emotional & psychological treatment, when indeed they have no psychological or psychotherapeutic training whatsoever, but might be trained in a completely different sphere, such as for example reiki healing, etc.; have trained at a non-licensed paradigm, that is, one which has not been scientifically proven to be helpful to people OR they have indeed had some relevant training in a recognized modality, but either it has not been sufficient enough – for example having had only a few months course of training – or start exercising their professional role with limited or no supervision to ensure clinical standards. It is very important to recognize that this field requires a huge amount of investment and dedication not only from the patients/clients, but also from the practicing psychotherapists themselves – a full comprehensive training, including the background discipline, usually takes many years.
Therefore, the most important step when choosing a psychotherapist, just like when you are choosing any other trusted medical professional, is making sure that you are staying safe by putting your trust in the hands of someone who has the appropriate levels of professional training and ethics: i.e., that you are going to work with an accredited, properly certified professional, who is trained within a publicly recognized domain of therapy. Usually a good way of making sure that this is the case is checking what kind of modality are they originally trained in, whether it is an officially recognized one and whether they are an accredited member of a licensed professional body, or are registered within specific professional clinical association of the respective certain country/region. The role of these professional bodies and associations is to keep a strict eye on all their members, making sure they adhere to all the necessary requirements allowing them to practice – not only previous training, but also being regularly involved in Continuous Professional Development (CPD), which ensures they are constantly improving their professional skills and are keeping up-to-date with new clinical understandings and modern treatments available, and are practicing within the agreed realms of the Professional Ethical Standards.
If you don’t have enough information about this through the health-center, website or other publicly available information of the psychotherapist you are considering, it is absolutely ok for you to ask them directly for more information on this, in order for you to feel fully informed and at ease. Alternatively, if you have any reasons for concern you can always check and verify with the accrediting Association if indeed this psychotherapist is a member of theirs or not.
Important warning signs – usually a hugely worrying sign is 1) if a particular psychotherapist advertises him- or her-self as a type of miracle cure provider, who promises huge results in just one or two sessions, and/or 2) advertises him or her-self as someone trained in a large number of modalities – someone who can work with extensive list of clinical presentations and claims to be a specialist in too many fields. Although most psychotherapists put a lot of effort in constantly learning new theories and developing new approaches, and are therefore using aspects of various other modalities they feel particularly drawn to, or think they are most suitable for certain presentations, these modalities are only a few and they don’t claim to be “trained” in them. The amount of time required for full training in a single modality is indeed a very long one for a person to be trained in more than one, two or extremely rarely – three at the very most – and statements for anything else should be treated with a big amount of caution.
Relationship with therapist or FIT
As already mentioned on this website, the sense of a fit between you and your Psychotherapist is of paramount importance for the overall success of the treatment and thus it is one of the key things you should really be mindful of when choosing who to work with. That sounds all rather nice, but what exactly is a fit, you may ask, and how might you know if you have it or not?
A fit can be best described as a sense that you find the psychotherapist you are embarking on this journey with approachable, truly interested in who you are, somewhat relatable to who you are or you would like to become, someone with whom you think you will be able to form a bond of trust – with time!!! Someone who you feel understands you or at least you sense the possibility of being understood, as you get to know each other with time. Of course, many of those aspects of “knowing” are relational, that means that they take time to be shaped to existence, that is, to be built within the context of the relationship, so generally some time needs to be invested in trying, before there is a fuller sense of “knowing” if there really is a fit or not.
Nevertheless, as with most other human relationships, there also is some sense of a “promise” that can often be felt as present at the very start of the relationship; a form of often instinctual chemistry or a glimpse of potential. Usually all psychotherapists begin by offering a consultation session, during which you both get to experience this early sense of relational fit, to get impressions from one another, so that you jointly are able to decide whether you want to continue working together or not. This session will help you get a better understanding of what you might expect in the therapy with this particular psychotherapist and to check if the fit feels right to you.
Important note: Bear in mind that a FIT does not necessarily mean someone with whom you find it the easiest or the most comfortable from the very start, though. Unfortunately, as is often noted, growth happens mainly when we are out of our comfort zone. Psychotherapy is a big commitment for both parties – both therapist and client. If you are really, really serious about the amount of time, effort or money you will spend, you might benefit from carefully thinking through your reasons for choosing a particular type of therapist or even more so – the reasons for which you want to AVOID certain therapists. Most often such preferences for or against could be centered on wanting to have a therapist of particular gender or age. To a certain degree that might be understandable and for a very good reason, but it could also unwittingly pull you further away from your desired place of growth and repairment. For example, if you have had a negative experience from and continue to have a negative relationship with the opposite sex, it might feel extremely normal to want to have a therapist who is from YOUR sex, someone who you feel that will know and understand where you are coming from and will have YOUR side. While in certain cases, such as trauma, abuse, etc., that might be totally appropriate, in other cases it might not be in your best benefit to stay within what feels immediately comfortable. You must bear in mind that a therapist with a good fit WILL understand you and WILL have your side, even if they are from the opposite sex. If they are from the sex that you intuitively wanted to avoid, though, they will also provide you with a valuable opportunity to repair something negative that has happened to you in the past, by allowing you to have what in some cases happens for the first time, and that is to have a POSITIVE experience of a relationship with the opposite sex. This, in itself, can be very healing and offer a more direct & time-sparing way of resolving some past issues, rather than the case in which you chose the more “comfortable” and known choice of sameness.
Of course, when choosing your therapist, there are a number of other considerations that will need to guide you too, such as travel distance, price, availability, etc. Until recently most psychotherapy was done only in person, but more and more often psychotherapists are also offering sessions Online. The reasons for this shift are numerous: from the extra financial burden of room-hire, which often significantly adds to the cost of a therapy session, to the fact that people find it much harder to invest the time required for sessions on a regular basis, when they also have to travel long distances to access these, right down to the reality that patients and clients themselves are often in a line of work which involves a lot of travel and online therapy is the means, which actually allows them to be able to access the support they need on a regular basis. You can and should consider all options available to you and chose the one that fits YOU the most, whatever your particular circumstances might be.