It is a good idea to interview a prospective therapist on the phone before making a first appointment.  Almost all therapists offer an initial, free phone consultation.  This is also helpful to the therapist, because he has a chance to ascertain whether or not the caller might be a good fit for his particular expertise and way of working.  A useful approach is to tell a prospective therapist as much about your problem as you feel comfortable doing.  Then ask him how he might approach your problem.  You might ask how much experience he has with problems like yours, and how he has addressed them in the past.  You can ask how he would describe how he works, and any specific modality he uses.  You can ask about his education, years in practice, and any particular specialty training he might have.  Therapists have a wide range of approaches to working with children, so if you are calling for your child or for your family, it is important to ask about his methodology concerning children and adolescents.  You might want to know how confidentiality works when more than one family member is seen.  This is also a good question when it comes to couples counseling.  You will also want to know about insurance, fees, and scheduling appointments.  You may have other important questions.  However, as you ask questions, you are also getting an opportunity to get a sense of the therapist as a person, and whether you think you would feel comfortable initiating a professional relationship with this particular person.

My plumber is a terrific person.  However, even if I didn’t particularly care for him, it wouldn’t matter much.  As long as he fixes my sink, we’re cool.  This is not the case if I wish to hire a therapist.  It is of utmost importance to feel comfortable with a therapist.  While a therapist’s expertise in a particular problem area, experience, and training are essential, we must also feel a prospective therapist has both the ability and the interest to connect with us in a relational and empathic way.  While psychotherapy is a professional service, it is also a relationship between two or more people.  It is a professional relationship, in that there are significant ethical boundaries involved and in that it is not reciprocal, but it also involves interaction, communication, and collaboration.  Even though there is now an a therapy app, our personal and interpersonal growth and healing mostly takes place in the context of a safe, trustworthy, and authentic relationship with another human being.  When interviewing a prospective therapist, it is important to trust one’s gut feeling.  A gut feeling is neither silly nor irrelevant, but an important clue as to whether or not there is a potential “goodness of fit” between oneself and a prospective therapist.

New babies are magnificent.  No matter what the circumstances within which they arrive, they are an experience like no other. They are also noisy, messy, demanding, and ungrateful.  Babies initially demand a degree of self-sacrifice that may be new to young parents.  So amidst the joy and excitement of a new baby, it’s normal for new parents to also feel resentful and hemmed in.  For young people for whom being up at 2 a.m. has generally meant there’s a party going on – being up at 2 a.m. walking a crying baby is a huge adjustment.  It is important to recognize that all life adjustments take time, effort, and the relinquishment of another way of being.  It can be helpful for new parents to acknowledge this and to affirm their feelings of regret or resentment without adding guilt to the mix.  Having a new baby also means that parents have less time for each other.  Couple time must become not only more intentional but more spontaneous – another significant adjustment.  Parenting is possibly the most significant role we may assume for which there is little or no training or preparation.  “It takes a village to raise a child” is not a catch phrase, but a concept with real significance.