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How to pick a therapist?
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<blockquote data-quote="Smithmom" data-source="post: 742818" data-attributes="member: 23371"><p>The replies here have made me think about my own therapy history. My experiences have all been with sliding scale clinics. I never had the luxury of selecting someone by age or gender. But interestingly it was a male 25 yrs or so younger than me who was my favorite. He was somewhat more than 25 but not a lot. </p><p></p><p>A good therapist doesn't talk about themselves. It's not about them. It doesn't matter if they're married, have kids, share your hobbies, etc. </p><p></p><p>CBT is valuable to most. It wasn't to me. Probably mostly because I was aware of my emotions. I could monitor my reactions. I wanted to address issues, not monitor my feelings and reactions to events. But its all in the way its done. The psychiatric resident who tried to teach me CBT as therapy spent the 45 minutes trying to get me to do a daily log and then talk about it. Perhaps without the forced log CBT would have been helpful as therapy. I don't recall how long I lasted with this, maybe 5 weeks.</p><p></p><p>To me therapy is like meeting a friend for a cup of coffee except for the fact that the entire discussion is about me. I want the therapist to listen. The agenda is something like this:</p><p></p><p>I give a general idea of what happened this week and what issue I want to talk about. Maybe 5 min.</p><p></p><p>He tells me what he wants to talk about. This is something we talked about previously that he has new thoughts about. FYI in a clinic the therapists have a weekly group mtg when they can share problems they have with clients. This is all within confidentiality and was a huge bonus for me. I can't stress how valuable this is. I stated an issue in my history in passing that my therapist found extremely disturbing. Its just fact to me so I didn't anticipate his reaction. He took this to his group to decide to tell me his reaction. This is maybe 5 min.</p><p></p><p>Then the rest of the time is about my issues. The therapist directs the discussion by asking questions. Eg I describe my interaction with my son last week. He asks why I said x. Then he asks what would have happened if I said y. But this is not confrontational, not an inatruction or suggestion. Its something I respond to and then move on. Its later that I think about y. So the following week I say that I thought about y and maybe y or z would be something I'll try next time.</p><p></p><p>To me this is what therapy should be.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Smithmom, post: 742818, member: 23371"] The replies here have made me think about my own therapy history. My experiences have all been with sliding scale clinics. I never had the luxury of selecting someone by age or gender. But interestingly it was a male 25 yrs or so younger than me who was my favorite. He was somewhat more than 25 but not a lot. A good therapist doesn't talk about themselves. It's not about them. It doesn't matter if they're married, have kids, share your hobbies, etc. CBT is valuable to most. It wasn't to me. Probably mostly because I was aware of my emotions. I could monitor my reactions. I wanted to address issues, not monitor my feelings and reactions to events. But its all in the way its done. The psychiatric resident who tried to teach me CBT as therapy spent the 45 minutes trying to get me to do a daily log and then talk about it. Perhaps without the forced log CBT would have been helpful as therapy. I don't recall how long I lasted with this, maybe 5 weeks. To me therapy is like meeting a friend for a cup of coffee except for the fact that the entire discussion is about me. I want the therapist to listen. The agenda is something like this: I give a general idea of what happened this week and what issue I want to talk about. Maybe 5 min. He tells me what he wants to talk about. This is something we talked about previously that he has new thoughts about. FYI in a clinic the therapists have a weekly group mtg when they can share problems they have with clients. This is all within confidentiality and was a huge bonus for me. I can't stress how valuable this is. I stated an issue in my history in passing that my therapist found extremely disturbing. Its just fact to me so I didn't anticipate his reaction. He took this to his group to decide to tell me his reaction. This is maybe 5 min. Then the rest of the time is about my issues. The therapist directs the discussion by asking questions. Eg I describe my interaction with my son last week. He asks why I said x. Then he asks what would have happened if I said y. But this is not confrontational, not an inatruction or suggestion. Its something I respond to and then move on. Its later that I think about y. So the following week I say that I thought about y and maybe y or z would be something I'll try next time. To me this is what therapy should be. [/QUOTE]
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