How Do I Know If Therapy Is the Right Choice for Me?

Assess your situation, goals, and therapist fit to decide if therapy is right.

Are you facing a crisis and feel you need some objective guidance to help you make the right decision? Are you concerned that your life just isn’t working the way you want it to and you haven’t found a way to change it yourself? Are you in a relationship that feels like it’s losing ground but you don't know why, or what to do to save it?

Should you seek professional help?

Most people reach out for outside guidance when they have run out of the resources they’ve used in the past to cope, and often during a trying time. Unless they’ve utilized professional help before, they are often unsure of how to proceed.

“What kind of person should I be looking for?”

“How do I know it will be the right fit?”

“What kind of therapy will work for me?”

“Can I afford it?”

Over the years, I have developed a crucial, first-meeting set of questions to help a new patient clarify that process before we start the work ahead of us. As they answer the following 10 questions, they can more easily recognize what they need out of therapy, what kind of therapist would be most likely to help them, and whether they can afford the commitment of time, energy, and finances to make that happen.

Many people have encouraged me to share this process so that others can make the right choices. Before you start your own search, ask yourself these questions to better focus on what you need. At its best, the therapeutic process can be a life-changing experience, and you are a critical part of that relationship.

Question 1: Are you looking for crisis counseling or more long-term work?

A quality professional can help you determine this from the outset and can also help you navigate to deeper work if you both determine that necessary. Crisis work is goal-oriented and deals with a patient’s resources and the demands put upon them. The responsibility of the therapist is to help the patient determine options and priorities that already exist. The patient relies on the therapist’s knowledge of what those are. Once the current crisis is resolved, that patient may be good to go, or decide to do deeper work.

Question 2: Can you share a concise narrative of your life to give a prospective therapist a true sense of how you became you, and what you are seeking to change?

Before coming to see a therapist, think of this personal reflection so that you can help a therapist zero in quickly on what preceded your desire to seek help. Create a narrative of the most important experiences you have lived and how you have coped with them.

Question 3: What do you think is your current most important issue to work on?

Focusing on priorities is crucial for your therapist to help you stay on course. Other issues may emerge that change that priority, but best to start on what feels like the most significant at the time.

Question 4: Is what is happening now a repeat of many other similar situations or novel at this time in your life?

Have you had a pattern of behaviors that has sabotaged your life repeatedly in the past or have you been hit with something you have never had to face before? You may just be seeking an objective, trained professional person to help you figure this out without sharing your situation with others.

Question 5: Who have been the most important influential people in your life both positive and negative, including those you may have never personally known?

These are the people in our lives who have influenced who we have become in concert from what we have genetically inherited. Even one monumental experience can change a life and create a perspective that is life-long.

Question 6: What biases do you have that might get in the way of looking at your life from a new perspective?

We all learn from those who nurture us and the beliefs they have about life. Those are often transferred from generation to generation but are sometimes no longer relevant and stop people from seeing their lives in a new and more productive way.

Question 7: What personality characteristics exist in the people you feel trust and respect?

Most people have known others in their lives who they trust to both care deeply for them and can also tell them their truths about the relationship even if they are difficult to share. Those combinations of thoughts and actions must be present in the therapist you trust your life choices to.

Question 8: Will you be able to challenge a therapist if they are not getting you or giving you what you need?

Many people have difficulty speaking their truth to a person they see as an authority. Yet, no therapist will be able to truly help if they are not assailable and wiling to hear a challenge from their patient. A therapist brings his or her expertise, education, and experience. The patient is the only one who knows who they are. It must be a relationship of mutual respect and learning.

Question 9: What do you need in a therapist when you feel helpless, vulnerable, or unable to hold things together?

If therapy is working, you are likely to experience a new and different way of seeing yourself. Sometimes that may be unsettling or even painful. Will you be able to tell your therapist as the relationship unfolds, what you need from them when those distressing thoughts or feelings emerge? In-the-moment interactions like this must be open to immediacy; the ability to talk about them as they happen.

Question 10: Do you feel comfortable enough with your therapist to ask for what you want out of your therapeutic relationship, even when those needs change as time passes?

As your therapeutic relationship grows more connected, new needs are likely to emerge. Can you rest assured that your therapist is flexible and open to the changes you may ask for as time goes on?

Once you have reflected on your answers, you will be able to more clearly define what the best therapeutic process is for you. Following your own guidelines, you will be in charge of creating the most successful outcome.

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