How Can I Tell If a Therapist Is a Good Fit?
I love this question because I think it is so nuanced. At the end of the day, what is the right fit for me may not be a match for everyone, and what I have looked for has changed over time depending on my circumstances and therapy goals.
A great place to start is by getting clear on what you hope to see change. Then, you can look for someone with the skills to support that specific change. Lastly, you want to choose someone you feel you can genuinely connect with.
I've been in stages of my life where I struggled with panic attacks and just needed someone to help me learn to stay grounded and regulated in my daily life. The therapist who supported me with that was not the same person who helped me understand the root of the panic attacks. I made another change, when looking for someone to support me in rewiring the beliefs and responses to my emotions that kept me reliving the same patterns. All of these folks did what I needed help with at the time, and then I moved on.
Understanding Safety in Therapy
Something important is that therapy is not meant to feel perfectly safe—no human relationship can be. What I mean here is that while you need to feel safe enough to be honest with your therapist about what you're experiencing emotionally and also to voice your opinion and disagreement, therapy is also uncomfortable. As a result, it can feel unsafe in your body at times.
What’s crucial when it comes to safety, is that you are working with someone who understands the inherent power dynamic present in therapy, and the way a therapist can negatively impact someone's feelings or beliefs about themselves with a thoughtless diagnosis or interpretation. If you are working with someone who does not understand intersectionality or have an awareness of different lived experiences, then you are at risk of having to navigate their ignorance or face countless microaggressions on the path to trying to heal. This makes it nearly impossible to create the trusting space necessary to see real and lasting change. When consulting with a new therapist, It’s completely acceptable to ask about how they incorporate an understanding of systemic oppression into their work and how they address differences between their experience of the world and yours.
What Does “Safe Enough” Look Like?
This is an essential question to consider, and is part of any trauma informed treatment. If you've been hurt in relationships, no relationship will feel entirely risk-free. It’s important to know and be able to communicate when you are in space where the discomfort is tolerable and when it’s not. A good therapist will support you with checking in and watching for this in session, to keep you in your window of tolerance. (The window of tolerance is where we are uncomfortable enough to change our neural pathways but not so uncomfortable that our nervous system becomes dysregulated and we feel distressed, experiencing things like panic attacks, or dissociation, or collapse).
Here are some signs that you’re in a “safe enough” zone:
Being able to communicate when you’re not okay or if something feels like too much and you need to stop.
Feeling like you can be curious about what you’re experiencing and engage that curiosity together with your therapist, to explore and understand why and how you react the way you do.
Being able to describe what’s happening both in your emotions, body, felt experience, and in the relationship that exists between you and your therapist.
Feeling comfortable to say no, or redirect the session to align with your priorities.
Feeling comfortable to express upset or hurt towards your therapist if they say or do something that feels misaligned.
Embracing Discomfort for Growth
Therapy isn’t supposed to feel perfectly comfortable or calm; change itself is inherently uncomfortable. A great question to ask yourself is: "Will I feel okay being vulnerable with this person, allowing them to support me through the discomfort that comes with change?" If not—if you feel like you’re performing, or that you want them to like you so much that you can’t be fully honest—then it might be difficult to achieve the changes you’re hoping for.
A good therapist will track and explore what’s happening in the moment, including the dynamic between you and them. They will ask questions about what they’re noticing to understand your experience, including how you’re experiencing them. It’s not enough for me to show up with openness and care, that has to be felt by folks, and everyone is going to need something a little bit different.
At the end of the day, as a therapist, I have to show up as myself to have a real and genuine interaction with whoever I’m working with at that moment. It’s less about technique and more about sharing a human experience.
If you feel heard and validated in your initial conversation with a therapist, and if they seem genuinely interested in what you need and are transparent about how they work, that’s a good sign. This is a big part of why at The Commons Wellness Collective, we offer a free consultation. We want you to make an informed choice about who you trust with your story as you work toward change. We would be honored to be part of your journey.