Will Therapy Help Me?: 5 Ways to Know You Found a Good Fit
Choosing to start therapy is a huge decision. Depending on past experiences with therapy or internalized beliefs about therapy, it can be a very challenging decision, too. So, it’s important to try to find a therapist who is a good match for you to help increase the chances that you will have a good experience and benefit from therapy. The therapeutic relationship (relationship between you and your therapist) is one of the most important aspects of therapy. I believe it is the most important.
You may not know right away that you and your therapist are a good match for each other. Even when you think therapy is going well, it can still be hard to know that it really is. If you haven’t had therapy before or had a poor experience in the past, it can be hard to recognize what a healthy therapy experience looks like.
I wanted to write this blog to share with you five signs that you might have found a therapist who is a good fit for you, so that you may be able to recognize it at any stage of your therapy experience.. These signs also reveal a lot about what a healthy therapeutic relationship looks and feels like (and what it doesn’t look or feel like). This information is important to know to help ensure that you are getting treatment that is right for you.
They Listen to You
I’ve had new clients (too many in my opinion) start working with me and share that they felt like previous therapists didn’t really listen to them.
“They didn’t really understand me.“
“It seemed like they weren’t really listening.”
“Thank you, my last therapist didn’t listen to me when I said I thought I might have ADHD.”
A huge part of being a therapist is to listen to our clients, so it can be hard to understand why a therapist wouldn’t be listening. I think this can be for a couple of reasons:
When client and therapist aren’t a good fit for each other, a client might feel like the therapist isn’t listening because they are not listening and responding in a way that the client needs.
Therapist actually isn’t listening. Unfortunately, there are “bad apples” in every profession, and the therapist could be disengaged from the session either intentionally (ie. lack of caring) or unintentionally (ie. overworked, lack of sleep). It’s not right either way, but I do believe this happens much more often unintentionally than intentionally.
If you have felt like your therapist isn’t listening to you, you can either choose to look for a new therapist or talk to your therapist about this. Good therapists are open to feedback and want to make sure that you’re getting the best treatment possible that meets your wants and needs.
They Have Experience and Training in the Issues You’re Hoping to Work On
This is something that can be addressed before even starting to work with a new therapist. You can ask them questions like:
How many years have you been a therapist? *Although years of experience don’t necessarily equate to better therapy.
Do you have experience and or training in anxiety, depression, trauma, (fill in with what you’re looking for help with)?
Do you have experience and or training in CBT, DBT, (fill in with specific type of therapy you are looking for)?
Can you help me with (fill in the blank)?
You Feel Safe With Them
Safety is a hugely important piece of the therapeutic relationship, maybe the most important. Without safety, you are less likely to be open and honest with your therapist or allow yourself to be vulnerable with them. Safety may take awhile to really feel, and it may look different at the beginning of therapy than it will after you have worked with your therapist for awhile.
At the beginning of therapy, it may look like noticing that you feel a little less anxious each time you meet with your therapist. After working with your therapist for awhile, it might look like not filtering what you share with them and allowing your guard to come down more often.
For my clients who have a trauma history or otherwise difficulty trusting people, it typically takes them longer, sometimes much longer, to build true trust and safety with me. That’s okay! That’s completely understandable. If you don’t feel safe with a therapist but you also don’t feel unsafe with them, that is okay. That may mean you need more time to build trust and safety, but it is still a good thing to continue to monitor as you move forward.
Feeling unsafe with a therapist might mean that you feel judged by them. They might be inconsistent by showing up late or rescheduling with you frequently. In rare cases, they may do or say something inappropriate that violates your boundaries. Again, these instances happen less often than positive experiences in therapy, but I think they are important to address because sometimes clients stay in relationships with unhealthy therapists, doctors, other professionals due to their “professional status.” This is me giving you permission to end relationships with professionals that make you feel unsafe in any way.
You Like Them
Typically, your therapist is someone who you meet with on a weekly or biweekly basis. This is not like your dentist who you see twice per year. This is someone who you typically meet with frequently and someone who you share most, if not all, of yourself with. It’s important that this is someone who you get along with - maybe similar senses of humor, some other similarity that you connect on, etc. This is important because the sense of getting along helps build the relationship and, therefore, the sense of safety and understanding in the relationship - which is crucial to your therapy experience and, ultimately, the progress you will make in therapy.
You Are Making Progress
This is a tough but important one. It’s tough because progress is subjective. Progress looks different for every single client. For one person, it might be building a better relationship with their partner by improving communication skills. For another, it might be learning two new coping skills to reduce anxiety. Whatever it is for you, make sure to communicate this with your therapist. They are there to help you identify goals and a path to achieving those goals.
Progress is often also smaller and slower than you might expect. In the media, therapy is often portrayed as a place where you make big breakthroughs in every session. That is just not reality. True, lasting change is often gradual and not linear. You’ll make forward progress, then plataue, then make progress, then face a set back, then plataue, and so on.
If you feel like you’re not making any progress, this is a great topic to bring up with your therapist. Because progress is so subjective, if you don’t talk about it, you and your therapist may have different ideas of what’s happening for you in therapy. The progress that you’re looking for might also change over time. This is why it’s important to have conversations about this throughout therapy, not just at the beginning.
These are general guidelines that are helpful to know and be able to recognize signs that you’ve found a therapist who is a good fit for you. You might have different criteria for what you look for in a therapist. Maybe personality match isn’t as important for you or maybe there are different things that make you feel safe or unsafe with someone. You can still use this list as a guide and customize it to your needs as you see fit.
There are other aspects to therapy that help determine how much you get out of it, like how engaged you are in therapy and whether you’re working on things outside of your therapy sessions. But the therapeutic relationship and finding a therapist that is a good fit for you is one great indicator of whether therapy will be helpful for you. Generally speaking, if you find or have a therapist who listens to you, has experience and training in what you’re looking for, feels safe, you like and are making progress with, then there’s a good chance you are a good fit for working together.