How To Choose A Psychologist

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

What principles should be followed when choosing a specialist psychologist / psychotherapist? First of all, when making an appointment with a psychologist / psychotherapist (usually by phone), it is already necessary to pay attention to how the dialogue takes place. An experienced, self-respecting specialist will not allow himself to persuade a potential client to come for a consultation, will not manipulate him, and will not give recommendations and advice. Based on their own intuitive feelings, too high or too low a price for the upcoming consultation may also be alarming.

If the decision to meet is made, then it is necessary at the first consultation to assess the degree of psychological comfort from communicating with a psychotherapist. In the event of tension, rejection, the feeling that you do not find a common language, this should be a serious prerequisite for abandoning this specialist and looking for another.

You should avoid those specialists who supposedly immediately understand everything with you, literally by the end of the first conversation. Of course, it is good if the specialist "sees right through you", but it is bad if he is trying to quickly stick a label on you with a diagnosis. Even in psychiatry, this is not always justified and adequate. In psychology, clients are, as a rule, healthy, which means they are always very difficult people. If a specialist quickly "makes a diagnosis", then he inevitably simplifies everything, not understanding and not trying to understand the subtleties of the client's soul. Such a psychologist is more concerned with his professional greatness and "insight" than with the psyche of a real client.

The correct approach in psychotherapy is to offer the client 4-5 meetings, and then, if necessary, renegotiate the contract for a longer period. During this time, the client will already take a closer look at the therapist, and the psychotherapist will decide whether he can work with this particular client.

It is not recommended to trust those specialists who promise to "correct the situation in a couple of sessions" or "guarantee the result in 3 hours". At the same time, an experienced psychotherapist will never say: "Let's start, and then we will see, maybe it will take a month, or maybe a year." As a rule, a specialist can only roughly estimate the time required to solve a problem, since the end result depends not only on the qualifications of the psychologist, but also on the depth of the problem, as well as on the client's willingness to work on himself.

The client may well be alerted right away, from the first meeting, with a proposal to conclude a contract for a long term (for example, for six months or a year). Any deprivation of the client's freedom of choice (whether or not to go to therapy, when to stop) should draw attention to itself. Although, there are exceptions: the specialist may offer to pay for the last session (the last meeting), which should not alarm the client at all. The fact is that at a certain stage, the client will have resistance due to the fact that psychotherapy has touched some of his pain points. This forces the client to drop everything immediately. In this case, it is the money paid that becomes a guarantee that this will not happen and the client will successfully overcome the unpleasant stage that has arisen. The same purpose is served by the practice of paying for missed classes, if the client warns about the pass less than a day in advance.

When looking for a specialist, you can read the reviews of his clients, although you can hardly navigate by them. Not every person wants to talk about what he visits a psychologist, and even more so to write about what problems the specialist helped him to solve. Instead, pay attention to the content the therapist produces (i.e. what he / she writes). The client should look for the necessary information about the specialist he is going to turn to: answers to questions on forums or specialized sites of psychological counseling, video materials about the psychotherapist that are in the public domain (for example, interviews in a particular radio or television show), as well as his articles or books. Although many good specialists are so busy with work that they simply do not have time to write articles.

Please note that a professional psychologist is always stable. This does not mean that he should be calm like a boa constrictor. Not at all. It's about something else. The psychologist must provide the client with stability in the following parameters: stability of meetings (except for specially stipulated cases, force majeure, etc.); stability of the amount of payment (except for a specially agreed and justified change in the cost of services); stability of the psychological state (the psychologist is able to distinguish between emotions caused by interaction with the client and the emotions that he brought from his personal life, and be able to manage them).

Another very important point: the psychologist should not enter into a personal relationship with his client. This norm in many ethical codes is clearly spelled out and enshrined as fundamental. If this requirement is not met, then the effectiveness of therapy for clients is greatly reduced, or even completely disappears.

These are, perhaps, all the main points that need to be addressed when choosing a psychologist / psychotherapist. I wish you to find exactly the kind of specialist you are looking for!