How to Find the Right Therapist for You

Okay, so you've figured out what all those damn letters mean. Now comes the harder part: How do you actually find the right therapist for you? Because credentials matter. So do training and experience. But none of those things automatically mean that a therapist is going to be the right therapist for you. A therapist can be highly educated, properly licensed, extensively trained, and very good at what they do, and you can still sit across from them and think: Nope. And that's okay.

What to Look for in a Therapist: Start With the Basics

First, let's get the basic stuff out of the way. Yes, you need to do your due diligence.

Make sure the person you're seeing is actually licensed to practice where you live. Because you probably don't want to discover halfway through therapy that the person you've been spilling your childhood trauma to doesn't actually have a license.

Yes, Dr. Phil, I'm looking in your general direction.

You also want to make sure they have the education and credentials they say they have. Therapists will often have their degrees displayed in their offices, and you can typically verify their license through the appropriate state licensing board.

Then there's the other alphabet soup of the therapy world, treatment modalities. You might see things like:

CBT — Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

ACT — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

EFT — Emotionally Focused Therapy

EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

And about those modalities, ask about the therapist's actual training in them. Don't assume that because somebody lists a particular treatment on their profile that they've received appropriate training in it. Ask. What training did you complete? How much experience do you have using it? Is this something you use regularly with clients? Because knowing the acronym and knowing how to actually use the therapy are two different things.

A Quick Note About Training, Certification, and All the Other Damn Letters

Let's use EMDR as an example. If a therapist says they provide EMDR, I want to know that they've completed an approved EMDRIA training (the overlords of EMDR). They do not necessarily need to be EMDR certified. Certification involves additional requirements beyond completing the initial training, and maintaining certification involves ongoing requirements. But simply seeing "EMDR Certified" after someone's name does not automatically tell you they're going to be better at providing EMDR than a therapist who has completed approved EMDRIA training and has experience actually using it with clients.

And this brings me to another issue I have with the mental-health field. I know. Shocking. I have issues with things in this field. We have become obsessed with certifications. There seems to be a certification for damn near everything, and therapists can spend hundreds, and sometimes thousands upon thousands, of dollars accumulating additional trainings, certifications, letters, and specialized techniques.

I'm not saying additional training isn't valuable. It absolutely can be. I've sought out additional training myself. What I don't believe is that therapists need a certification in absolutely everything they do, or that collecting more certifications automatically makes someone a better therapist. Because underneath all the fancy modalities, acronyms, certifications, and shiny new approaches are the same basic clinical skills we learned when we were training to become therapists in the first place.

Can you actually listen?

Can you pay attention to what the client is saying, and what they're not saying?

Can you ask good questions?

Can you recognize patterns?

Can you build rapport?

Can you communicate effectively?

Can you make someone feel heard and understood while still challenging them when they need to be challenged?

Those basic attending and counseling skills aren't particularly flashy. Nobody is going to put "Really Fucking Good at Listening" after their name. But they matter. You can know every fancy intervention in the world, but if you can't establish a therapeutic relationship, listen effectively, understand the person sitting across from you, and use solid basic counseling skills, all those fancy techniques aren't going to magically make therapy work. And yes, the certification obsession in the mental-health field deserves its own article. We'll get there.

Get the Boring Practical Shit Out of the Way Too

Before we get into whether you actually vibe with someone, there are some very unsexy practical questions that matter.

Do they take your insurance?

If they don't, what is their private-pay rate?

Do they offer a sliding scale if you're paying privately?

Can you realistically afford to see them consistently?

What is their availability?

Does it work with yours?

Do they offer in-person therapy, Telehealth, or both?

And which one do you actually want?

None of this is particularly exciting, but it matters. The world's greatest therapist isn't going to be particularly useful to you if they're available Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m. when you're at work, charge more than you can afford, or only offer Telehealth when you desperately want to sit in an actual room with another human being. Once you've established all of that, we can get into the other stuff.

The feelings part.

Do You Actually Feel Comfortable With This Person?

This is where choosing a therapist becomes much less about what's written on their profile and much more about what happens when you're actually sitting across from them. Maybe that's during a free consultation. Maybe it's during your first intake appointment. Ask yourself:

Do I feel comfortable with this person?

Do I feel safe talking to them?

Now, let's be realistic. You're probably going to have some anxiety during that first appointment. You're meeting a complete stranger and potentially telling them things you don't exactly discuss while standing in line at Target. That's normal. If you and the therapist are a good match, though, you may notice some of that anxiety beginning to decrease as the appointment goes on. But (and this is important), that isn't a perfect test. Sometimes it takes time. There's something in therapy called therapeutic rapport, which is essentially that cute little relationship that develops between therapist and client. Yay! Or at least, it should develop between therapist and client. You don't necessarily have to walk out of session one thinking: This is my person. But you should begin to feel like this is someone you might be able to trust.

How Does Your Therapist Communicate?

This is another personal pet peeve of mine because we don't talk about it nearly enough.

Therapists have different communication styles. Some therapists are direct. If you're engaging in some wonky thinking, they may essentially say: Hey. What's going on there? They're going to challenge the thought. They're going to point out the pattern. And if you're engaging in unhealthy behavior, they're probably going to address it pretty directly. Other therapists take a softer, gentler approach. Rather than directly challenging something, they may say: Let's explore that a little more. Neither approach is automatically better.

The question is, which one works better for you? Some people need someone who will lovingly call them on their shit. Other people will completely shut down with that approach and need someone who helps them arrive at the realization more gradually. And sometimes you need a therapist who knows when to do both. You can ask about this before you even start working together: Are your sessions more active and collaborative, or are you more of a "you talk, I listen" therapist? That's a perfectly reasonable question. You're trying to figure out what sitting in a room with this person for an hour is actually going to be like.

Validation Does Not Mean Agreeing With Everything You Do

You should feel validated in therapy, but within reason. Validation doesn't mean your therapist agrees with everything you think, feel, say, or do. If you're engaging in unhealthy behaviors, your therapist shouldn't be validating the unhealthy behavior just to make you feel better. Period. They should be able to validate the emotion or experience underneath the behavior while still helping you recognize when the behavior itself isn't healthy. There's a difference between I understand why you're feeling this way and Everything you're doing because you feel this way is perfectly fine. A good therapist needs to be able to hold both.

You Should Feel Heard, Valued, and Not Judged

This part is huge. You should feel like your therapist is actually listening to you. You should feel heard. You should feel valued. And you shouldn't feel judged. You should also be able to give your therapist feedback.

You should be able to say:

Hey, I really don't like the direction we're going. Can we try something different?

Or:

That didn't sit right with me.

Or:

I don't think this is helping.

A healthy therapeutic relationship should be able to tolerate those conversations. Your therapist isn't going to get everything right. They're human. They may misunderstand you, phrase something badly, or try an approach that doesn't work for you. What matters is, what happens when you tell them?

Can they hear you?

Can they talk about it with you?

Can the two of you adjust?

Because therapy isn't something that's supposed to be done to you. You are part of the process. And if you consistently feel judged, dismissed, unheard, or like your therapist spends more time talking about themselves than actually listening to you, that deserves your attention too.

Which brings us to...

Okay, So What Are the Red Flags?

We've talked about what you should be looking for in a therapist. Now let's talk about some of the things that should make you stop and think, What the hell is happening here?

And we'll start with the big one. (I do know there are more, but for the sake of, well, my sanity, I'm sticking to three for now.)

Red Flag #1: They're Hitting on You

If your therapist is hitting on you:

Run.

Don't walk.

Don't meander.

Run.

Just get up and leave.

They're not the therapist for you. They will never be the therapist for you. There is a power dynamic inherent in the therapeutic relationship, and sexual or romantic behavior from your therapist is not part of therapy. It is a massive boundary violation. You don't need to stick around to figure out whether you misunderstood their intentions. You don't need to worry about hurting their feelings. You don't need to give it another session.

Leave.

Red Flag #2: Their Self-Disclosure Becomes Their Therapy Session

Therapist self-disclosure isn't automatically a bad thing. Self-disclosure is basically when a therapist shares something personal about themselves with a client, usually because they believe it could be helpful to the therapeutic process. For example, maybe you're struggling with behavioral issues with your children, and your therapist also has children. They might say something like, I've experienced something similar with my kids. This is something that helped me, and it might be something worth trying. That's a relatively brief disclosure, and then the focus goes right back where it belongs. On you.

The problem is when the therapist's self-disclosure stops being about helping the client and starts becoming about the therapist. I've heard of a therapist spending essentially an entire session talking about their own sex life with their spouse because the client was discussing sexual problems within their marriage. No. The fact that the client's sex life was the topic of therapy does not suddenly make the therapist's sex life the topic of therapy. Not appropriate. And yes, sex therapy is its own specialty with different conversations around sexuality, but that still doesn't mean the therapist sits there telling you the intimate details of their own sex life.

Now, little caveat here. I'm guilty of occasionally letting my own self-disclosure go on a little too long. As you may have noticed, I tend to ramble. Yep, again, I know. (Shocking.) I try to catch myself, wrap it up, and bring it back around to the client. Because ultimately, that's the question a therapist should be asking themselves when they disclose something personal. Who is this disclosure actually for?

If it's helping the client understand something, feel less alone, see another perspective, or move the therapeutic work forward, there may be a reason for it. If the client is now sitting there listening to the therapist process their own life? We've got a problem. There are plenty of ways for us to make a point without making your therapy session about us.

Red Flag #3: They're Keeping You in the Dark About Your Diagnosis

This one is a personal red flag for me, and it's tied to a much bigger belief I have about therapy. You deserve to understand your own treatment.

I've had clients come to me and be surprised when I start talking to them about diagnosis. They'll say, Wait. What do you mean you're giving me a diagnosis? I've been in therapy for years. I've never had a diagnosis. And I'll ask, Were you using insurance? Yep. Then a diagnosis was almost certainly involved somewhere in that process, because insurance reimbursement generally requires clinicians to submit a diagnosis or diagnostic code as part of billing. The client just may never have had anyone actually talk to them about it.

And personally, I have a problem with that. If I'm diagnosing you, I believe you deserve to know what that diagnosis is and, if you want to understand it, why I arrived at it. I'll go over the rationale with my clients. I'll explain what I'm seeing, how I'm conceptualizing what's going on, and why I chose the diagnosis I did. Because it's your treatment. You deserve access to information about what's happening in your own mental-health care.

It isn't my job to hoard the knowledge because I'm the therapist and you're the client. My job is to help empower you with information and knowledge, not keep it from you. Now, do I particularly enjoy giving people diagnoses? Not really. Diagnosis has limitations, and that's an entirely different rabbit hole we can go down another day.

But diagnoses can sometimes give us a useful foundation for understanding what's happening and where we might start working. Sometimes they're incredibly useful. Sometimes...not so much. Depends on the diagnosis. Again, whole other article. But regardless of how I personally feel about the diagnostic system, I don't believe the client should be the last person to know what's being documented about their own mental-health treatment.

And if you ask your therapist, What's my diagnosis? or Why did you give me that diagnosis? I think you deserve an actual conversation about it. Because there's a bigger theme running through all of these red flags. Therapy should not require you to hand over all your power at the door.

You're not just the person lying on the proverbial couch while the all-knowing therapist analyzes you. You're a participant in your own treatment. You get to ask questions. You get to understand what's happening. You get to give feedback. And you get to decide whether the person sitting across from you is someone you trust enough to do this work with.

Therapy Is Not a Passive Process

Here's the thing I really want you to take away from all of this: Therapy is not a passive process. Therapy requires your active participation. And honestly, I would consider it at least a reddish-pink flag if a therapist doesn't encourage you to actively participate in your own therapy.

Because as cliché as it sounds, what you put into therapy has a lot to do with what you get out of it. If you come in every week and spend the entire session venting about what happened since the last time you were there, you're probably not going to get very far.

Now, if that's what you're looking for? Great. Fine. Sometimes people need a place to vent. Sometimes having one hour where someone listens to you is exactly what you need. But understand what you're getting from it. If you're coming to therapy because you actually want something in your life to change, at some point you have to work on something.

That's why we have goals and treatment plans. At some point, therapy should move beyond Here's what happened this week and into Okay, what are we actually doing with this? And this brings me to another personal philosophy I have about being a therapist. I'm trying to work myself out of a job. Seriously.

My goal isn't for you to need me every Tuesday at 3:00 for the rest of your natural life. I want to help you understand what's happening, develop the skills you need, work through whatever brought you into therapy, and eventually reach a point where you don't need to come see me anymore.

Does that mean once you "graduate" from therapy you're never allowed to come back? Of course not. Because life is life. And life is always going to life. Maybe two years later something completely different happens and you come back. Okay. Let's get going. Let's figure out what's happening, work through it, get you where you need to be, and get you back on your feet.

But if you come back because you're struggling with the exact same problem we supposedly spent all that time working on, then I think I need to look at what happened. Maybe I didn't help you in the way you needed to be helped. Maybe we weren't actually a good therapeutic fit. Maybe the theoretical orientation I was using wasn't right for you. Maybe the technique wasn't right. Maybe we were working on the wrong damn thing.

Something didn't fit.

And I think therapists need to be willing to look at that too.

Therapy Is Supposed to Be Uncomfortable Sometimes

I think this is also where a lot of people become frustrated with therapy. They go every week, talk about what happened during their week, leave, and come back the next week to do it all over again. Eventually, they start to wonder, What exactly am I getting out of this?

That's a fair question. Because actual therapeutic work can be hard, uncomfortable, messy, and sometimes it's gross. Actually, sometimes it's really fucking gross. I'm saying that as someone who has been on the other side of the room too. I've been in therapy. It was hard, uncomfy, and gross. Ugh, really, really gross. But that's part of doing the work.

That is exactly why finding the right therapist matters so much. Because when you're sitting in all that gross, uncomfortable shit, you need someone sitting across from you whom you trust. Someone you feel safe with, who listens to you and can challenge you without making you feel judged. You need to be able to disagree with them. You need to be able to say, This isn't working for me. They shouldn't need you to stay in therapy forever to prove they're doing their job. They should be able to sit with you in the uncomfortable parts while still helping you move toward something better. Ultimately, you're looking for a therapeutic relationship where you can feel uncomfortably comfortable. Because that's really what it is.

The right therapist isn't necessarily the person who makes therapy comfortable. They're the person who makes you feel safe enough to do the uncomfortable work. And that is what and who you're looking for.