Getting Started with a new Therapist

Try Things Out

Anyone who has dated knows that there is only so much a person can learn about another when reading an online profile.  While online profiles will probably help you to narrow down your search for a therapist, it will be difficult to figure out if you feel comfortable with a particular therapist without talking to them.  Two things happen when you give yourself the opportunity to “try out” a few therapists.  First, you gather an immense amount of information about how you feel speaking to a particular therapist, whether it feels right to you, in a way that simply can’t be ascertained any other way.  Second, after talking to a few therapists and then selecting one, your own sense of having chosen the best therapist for you will have increased tremendously.  A person’s confidence and belief in the therapeutic process counts for a lot, and your confidence will be all the greater for having chosen the best of the available options.

Ideally, giving a therapist an audition means that you can actually schedule an appointment (or a few) with them to see how it feels to work with them before committing to working together on a longer-term basis.  However, this can be time-consuming and costly.  Alternatively, most therapists will offer to talk to you over the phone for a few minutes to see if you are a good fit for their practice.  Even spending 10 or 15 minutes talking with a person over the phone can give you a greater sense of what it is like to work with a therapist.  Find a few therapists whose online profiles catch your interest, then schedule phone consults with them.  Let the therapist know that you are consulting with a few different therapists so that you can each respect one another’s time and process.

The First Few Appointments

If the mantra of searching for a therapist is “trust your gut” and “allow yourself a choice” then things shift a little bit once you start with a therapist.  

There are, at this point, countless approaches to psychotherapy, both in theory and in practice.  While many theories of therapy emphasize different tasks as being important, I think it is helpful to look to an old-fashioned approach to psychotherapy when navigating the first few appointments with a new therapist. When the first psychoanalytic therapists started practicing, they asked their patients to speak their mind, as completely and as honestly as possible.  That’s it.  This tends to be vastly more difficult than anyone ever expects, particularly since so few therapists emphasize the importance of being able to do so.  

I emphasize this “rule” of therapy, because it can be so helpful in navigating the turbulence of the first few appointments with a new therapist (although it never really stops being helpful).  Early on in a therapy relationship, there can be a very typical arc of excitement and enthusiasm for finding a new therapist and beginning a process that can potentially help relieve suffering.  If you took your time finding a new therapist and chose from a few appealing options, you might even be inclined to idealize your therapist a little bit. Nonetheless, inevitably, your therapist will do something that doesn’t feel quite right to you.  They will misread an emotion, lead a conversation down a path that seems unhelpful, and maybe your feeling of enthusiastic appreciation gives way to uneasiness.  Maybe your therapist will even say something that directly offends you – or does something you recognize as a repetition of some harmful, oppressive, or traumatic pattern from your life outside of the therapist’s office.  

When these things happen, two things are important.  The first is to say how you feel to your therapist.  Even the best therapists are not fully empathic, they may suspect that you feel a certain way, but can’t know unless you tell them.  If you start to feel that the relationship isn’t working as you want it to, for whatever reason, give your therapist a chance to address the matter by telling them how you feel.  The second is, having given your therapist a chance to address the matter, remember that you have a choice to stay in this relationship.  You will have to use your own judgement about whether the way in which the therapist addresses your concerns is satisfactory to you.  You may ask a question that your therapist can’t answer, but what is probably more salient is whether your therapist takes your question seriously.  If you can continue trusting your therapist, keep working with them.