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Ask HN: How do you find and choose a mental health therapist?

1 points by el_nahual ↗ HN
Asking here because I suspect some people in this community will have had similar experiences with therapists as I've had. I think that when the patient is a combination of intelligent, well-read, and defensive, it's very easy to look down at therapists with a bit of disdain and contept, rendering them ineffective.

I find this is particularly true when discussing things that get serious or dark: heavy trauma, suicide, addiction, things like that.

The vast majority of therapists are IMHO out of their league/depth.

Cost has in my experience not been a good proxy for quality: expensive therapists are simply more capable jiving with the mores of the elites.

How do you find/choose/vet a therapist that works for you?

4 comments

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m-watson
Not answering your question really but I will say the "[...]defensive, it's very easy to look down at therapists with a bit of disdain and contept, rendering them ineffective." part is not on the therapist necessarily. Therapy is not some magic thing that is going to "fix" problems. Coming at therapy with a defensive and disdainful approach is only going to take away from your therapy and will require work for you to get over that in therapy. In fact it might be a great starting point to go into to re-frame your thinking to assist in the rest of therapy.
ale_jacques
Trial and error. I've just switched, again. 3 times already.
el_nahual
How do you know it's time to switch? How are you finding the therapist you switch to?
chewz
I do not. Therapy does not work for me for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

I have however attended AA meetings and ordinary folks stories have impacted me deeply in therapeutic sense.