If you’re considering therapy, I think there are three important questions to ask yourself.
Question #1: Do you really need therapy?
Not everyone does. And even those who benefit from therapy at some point in their life don’t usually need it indefinitely. If you’re generally content with life, and if your current resources feel sufficient for meeting your goals, then therapy may not add much.
Therapy might be worth considering if you’re struggling in an important area, and despite your best efforts, you haven’t been able to make meaningful improvements. Maybe you can’t stop ruminating about some event, and this keeps you from really living. Or perhaps you keep getting stuck in the same rut in your romantic life, choosing people who inevitably leave you disappointed.
Question #2: What type of therapy do you want?
Broadly speaking, therapies tend to fall into two categories: those that focus on building skills and those that foster insight.
Skills-based therapies assume that psychological problems arise from a lack of coping skills, and they attempt to remedy this by teaching skills. A CBT therapist might teach you to reframe the way you think about certain situations. A DBT therapist might introduce mindfulness practices or strategies for setting boundaries with others.
Insight-oriented therapies, on the other hand, recognize how hard it is to know ourselves. Most of our mental life is unconscious, and these hidden processes can trap us in maladaptive patterns. Gaining awareness can help us to attain control over our lives.
So when looking for a therapist, it can be helpful to ask yourself: do you think you’ll benefit from learning new skills or from gaining a deeper understanding of yourself? Some of my own thoughts on this topic, can be found here.
Question #3: What individual therapist qualities matter to you?
This is a personal question with no single right answer. You might prefer a therapist of a particular gender, or you might be drawn to someone simply because your initial phone consultation felt right.
In my own search for therapists over the years, I found that some factors were far more important than others. Their school or degrees mattered much less than I’d expected. What proved most significant was whether they had done their own insight-oriented therapy. Without that self-exploration, therapists risk unconsciously projecting their own conflicts onto their patients.
Final Thoughts
Choosing a therapist takes careful thought and reflection. It starts with considering whether therapy is the right step for you, then reflecting on what type of therapy — skills-based or insight-oriented — best fits your needs, and finally, thinking about the individual qualities that matter in a therapist. Working through these questions can help you make an informed decision, whether that means starting therapy now, waiting, or exploring another path altogether.