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The Jewish Home | MARCH 24, 2022
Dr. Deb
Some Things to Ask Yourself When Selecting a Therapist By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.
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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
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hen you buy anything important – a car, a home, a Pesach vacation – you do some research. You find out what works, what doesn’t, what should happen, etc. But for some reason, it seems people plunge into therapy without much expectation of how it “should” go – and are often disappointed. So I’ve made a list of the top three bullet points you most likely would not expect but are more important in selecting your therapist than anything else: • Is this person nice? Now that may sound strange. What does “nice” have to do with expertise and experience? Isn’t it more important that they know what they’re doing? No! Don’t get me wrong. Of course, they need to know what they’re doing, but that is not and ought not to be at the top of the list. Here’s why: We are basically emotional beings. We make decisions through emotion. And we trust – or don’t trust – through emotion. When you must open up your vulnerabilities to a therapist – and there is no way around doing that if you want to solve the deeper emotional problems in your life – then they better be nice, kind, caring, empathetic, compassionate, sincere, authentic human beings. Does that mean forget experience? Of course not. But I have heard of a lot of damage done by clinicians who were working in the field a long time and had the necessary education, and yet let their arrogance, ego, personal problems, lack of self-insight, or misjudgment combined with a lack of caring damage a person, perhaps for years. Here’s a non-therapy example. Suppose you go to a medical doctor for a medical problem. The person doesn’t have a good “bedside manner.” That is, he or she doesn’t seem to connect with your fears about the problem, the pain you have from
the problem, or, in fact, your intense wish to live. But you choose this doctor because of their expertise. They are at the top of their department in the medical school, have published articles, and so forth. Now, down the road, they must make a decision: Should they aggressively fight a tumor that is almost down to nothing, just to finish it off but take a risk that the chemicals will kill the patient, or should they be more conservative in their approach? The kindly, emotionally sensitive doctor might opt for the more conservative approach which reduces the odds of death even though time might be needed in the future to finish off killing the tumor with chemicals. The “expert” who just wants to get the job done might make the wrong decision. • Does the person “get” me? More important than the therapist’s level of expertise on paper is the feeling you get when you’re talking to them. Do they get it? Are they listening? Can they read between the lines? Do they pick up the nuances? One of the most important jobs of a marriage is attunement. Each member of the couple must “get” the other or there is a disconnect that feels insurmountable and
depressing. Well, all that is possible, but it takes therapists who themselves are attuned in order to do so. How in the world can a person who misses the boat teach someone else not to? So then the next question is: As the consumer looking for a therapist, how can you tell if you’re “gotten”? How do you feel “felt”? Are there any signs to look for to tell if the therapist really understands your position? There are, indeed, but you yourself have to be a tiny bit vulnerable in order to run the test. You have to share a bit of something and see if the therapist picks it up. That’s good because when they do, you not only know that they understood you intellectually but also they can “feel” you. There is an exchange of information at a non-conscious level that you will feel. The interesting thing here is that if you’re closed off to the therapist, they may still get you anyway (if they are good at reading the signs), but you may not know it. You may be too concerned about playing your cards close to your vest to realize that they understand that you’re doing exactly that, playing your cards close to your vest. In this instance, they might get you but you
didn’t realize it. So to be able to measure the therapist’s ability here, you would want to be tuned into the interplay between the two of you and just a bit vulnerable. • Does this person have the tools to help me make the changes I need to make? Let’s say they told you their tools. How would you know if those are good tools? When I was up for a new computer, I did my homework. Believe me, I had no interest in “gigabytes” and other such technological stuff. But how else would I compare? (That’s probably why I haven’t gotten one in a number of years; who has time for that?) There are literally thousands of methods in the psychotherapy world, but they fall into just a few categories: 1. The therapist is an excellent listener and expects you to figure out what you need on the basis of having put it all on the table. Such a therapist may provide interpretations as well. To me, personally, I think interpreting another person is arrogant. When a therapist thinks they can understand the complex workings of another person’s mind, I can’t explain it any other way than to say it’s rude at the very least. None of us should presume to “know” what’s in someone else’s mind. But people very often do feel listened to and understood by such therapists, especially if they do more listening than interpreting, and that is a good thing. 2. The therapist believes that behavior change is the answer. And it most certainly is, except for the problem that we can’t always act the way we wish we did and know we should. Sometimes our emotions get the best of us. Any behavior changes that we want must follow looking inside ourselves to figure out how our feelings rule us. Which brings me to the last of the three categories.
