There are many different types of talk therapy being offered today. This can make it feel confusing to know what sort of therapist you should be looking for, especially if you are feeling distressed or overwhelmed at the time you are searching for a therapist.
It is worth keeping the following things in mind as you choose a therapist. Trained professional therapists have educational and clinical backgrounds related to therapy processes, personality, and human development. It would be unreasonable to expect you to have all this knowledge and experience yourself, just as it would be unreasonable for someone to have to learn everything about how to treat a heart condition before seeing a cardiologist for help.
You can expect that the therapist you are talking to will do their best to provide a general rationale for the plan for therapy. This is a crucial part of what is known as “informed consent.”
There can be an ongoing conversation about the rationale for the treatment plan. When this happens, it can strengthen the working alliance with the therapist.
The “informed consent” process continues through the initial sessions, and throughout the entire duration of the therapy. Many people benefit from longer-term therapy processes. As you spend more time in therapy, you and your therapist will tend to learn more about you and the factors underlying your initial concerns. Further into the therapy, you may have language to describe your concerns that differs from the way you spoke about yourself when you first started therapy. This means that the language you and your therapist will use to talk about the plan for therapy will evolve. This expanded self-understanding is one of the ways in which progress occurs in longer-term therapy.
A therapist experienced in long-term therapy will be able to anticipate the kinds of changes that can happen over time as therapy processes unfold and will be in a position to adapt the treatment plan accordingly.
The kinds of therapy that we specialize in are psychoanalytic therapies (including psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy) and CBT, or cognitive-behavioral therapy. We have written a summary of some of the research findings which support the use of these therapies.
