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.
This is extremely informative.
This is really helpful, thanks!