When I look at finding a therapist (I needed one very very badly back in August/September), my choices were limited due to financial reasons. However I got extremely lucky with where my mother works (Yes I am over 18 I'm 23) her office provides free counselling to employees, family of the employee, as well as our first nations community. Because of that I was able to choose between one of 7 licensed psychologists, to be able to access, at no cost to me, completely anonymous, and her office covered the bills, when the psychologist sends the invoice there is no name attached, just a client number to protect the identity of the accessee. This was tremendously helpful however I still had the question of who do I pick. Well, I read through all of their bios, and eliminated the ones who did not mention that they worked with trauma and survivors of Domestic/Sexual abuse. That took down my candidate pool to around 3. I then went to each website, read about how they usually do their sessions, what they're "style" I guess you could say, of therapy was.
I ultimately ended up going with one who doesn't attack the trauma by forcing you to talk about it and reliving it, but separates it into different parts, your past self, present self. Different parts of you, from each of those, which for me have become numerous, We have given these "Parts" of me different names, The protector, the part that always feels like I can't let people get close to me or I'll get hurt again, I have The Reflector, which has always worked on seeing what I could've done differently, I have The Scared Child, which is self explanatory, The Bully, this one always beats myself up for not doing something differently, and not speaking up about my abuse when I was in that situation. Some of these parts like my therapist, some do not.
These are all different parts of me, and what my therapist has helped me and is currently still helping me do, is to show these various parts, that while I still need them in some capacity, they do not have to do the same job as hard as they have over the last 16 years. It is a process, and one that I am very freshly into, and it will take time, it will not take a few more sessions, it will take many many months, if not years to fully heal from my childhood traumas. This is what has worked best with me.
My last therapist (back in 2020), took the approach of, if you don't talk about it, we don't deal with it, which ultimately made me very very weary to go back into therapy, and why I took so long to start again. I went back into therapy because, I had one night, back in August or September, where I lied in bed at 1AM and I cried my eyes out. I cried for probably 4 and a half hours straight. The first time in years that I had genuinely cried and felt utterly worthless. I was ready to get in my car and CTB that night. But I stayed in bed, I grabbed my weighted blanket, and I curled into a ball and cried myself to sleep. The next day I told my mum what happened, and she helped me get into therapy.
I told my current therapist that I am unwilling to go on anti-depressants, as I would rather feel sad all the time, than nothing at all. They have respected my wishes completely and has never once brought up the idea in or out of therapy. This is what a good therapist in my opinion should do. Mine has treated me like a normal person, and not seen me as a victim, or anything like that. They've always been kind, caring, and when I loose focus, or I zone out while talking about difficult thing, they bring me back into reality gently, sometimes, my ADHD brain will not let me put into words what I am trying to think, and they understand that. When it does come to me, we go back to that.
All in all this in my opinion is what makes a good therapist, and what someone should look for when searching for one.
Sadgirl121
Signing out
