12 Signs of Good Therapy 👍

Hey guys, Natalie Moore, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist here, and today I'm going to talk about some signs of good therapy.

How do you know if your therapist is any good?

You want to see that the therapist is making clear agreements at the beginning of treatment. So this could happen in that first phone call that you have with your therapist. You want them to make clear agreements about the fees, scheduling and any cancellation policies they might have before you come in. In the first session, you want to make sure that your therapist is going over the informed consent document with you so that you know what is confidential and what is not. And again, know exactly what it is that you're signing.

The next one is a balance between comfort and discomfort. So there's going to be some inherent discomfort in going to a therapy session in the beginning, but you also want to feel as though your therapist is doing everything that they can to mitigate some of that and to help you feel as comfortable as you possibly can in that uncomfortable environment. Another one is you want to feel like your therapist gets you, understands you, is not judging you, and is really empathic and can put themselves in your shoes. You also want your therapist to be able to uphold boundaries, like boundaries around time. So are sessions starting and ending at the right time? Is the therapist able to hold boundaries around things like text messages and phone calls between sessions. You might think, "Hmm, why would I want that? Don't I want some free minutes or some free phone calls or something?" But if you think about it, you want a therapist who has really good boundaries because you want to have good boundaries in your own life and you need someone who can model that for you too. You want a therapist who seems calm and confident. If the therapist is more anxious in the session than you are, how helpful are they going to be, right? You want to see a therapist who is present and not distracted in your sessions. So Part of what makes therapy so healing is that you are with this person who is just so present to you and is in the moment and is really listening and really cares about what you're talking about. You want your therapist to be able to take feedback and criticism from you well. If there's something that your therapist is doing or not doing that you feel you need to call to their attention, great, do it! When a client brings something to my attention that is uncomfortable, I am so grateful and I praise them for it. I say, "Wow, I am so glad that you felt comfortable telling me that, and I'm so glad that you told me that even though it probably was a little bit uncomfortable, actually." Along a similar line, you want your therapist to be able to catch their own mistakes and apologize for them. So again, it's a relationship. We're not perfect, we're human beings, and so there are going to be times when a therapist accidentally offends their client or says the wrong thing or does the wrong thing or maybe reacts too quickly or takes something personally. Or, you know, passes a judgment on a client, these are actually opportunities to improve the therapeutic relationship. Relationships get stronger as they rupture and repair, rupture and repair, rupture and repair. So if a rupture happens, it's not actually a bad thing. It's actually an opportunity. So you want your therapist to actually notice when they've accidentally hurt you and apologize for what they've done. There should also be a balance between your therapist talking and listening. If your therapist is not saying anything, that would be concerning, and if your therapist is saying so much that you don't have any time to talk, that would be concerning to me too. You also want to see that your therapist is not giving you too much advice and is actually letting you come to conclusions on your own. So people often think mistakenly that therapy is a place for getting advice. It's actually not. Therapists are actually trained not to give very much advice. I'm sure you guys have all heard the saying, "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life." So as therapists, we don't want to give you the fish by giving you the advice. First of all, because it might not even be the right advice for you, and secondly, it's not that helpful, right? But if we can bring you in on this process of self-reflection and finding clarity and trusting yourself, right, then over time when you have these difficult situations and decisions to make, you will actually be able to do them on your own without having therapist help or advice. Your therapist should also use an appropriate amount of self-disclosure. So every therapist has their own views on how much they believe is helpful and healthy for them to disclose to their clients. You could see it as a spectrum. On the spectrum, I'm definitely very high on the self-disclosure side. Here's a really good way of gauging whether it's an appropriate amount of self-disclosure: if the therapist is sharing something about themselves that relates to you in some way and relates to what you're going through and is obviously sharing it to give you some of their perspective and it's a helpful story that doesn't go on and on and on, right, keeping it concise and keeping it relevant, then it's a good amount of self-disclosure. The last thing I want to leave you with in terms of deciding if you have a good therapist or not is really to encourage you to focus more on the relationship as opposed to your specific outcomes in your life. So we really don't know how long it's going to take for you to start feeling better and for you to let go of old habits and bring in healthier habits and change patterns and change relationship dynamics and, you know, reduce your anxiety and your depression and all of that stuff, right? It could honestly take years. It could take a very long time. So instead of focusing on, am I seeing tangible changes in my life, focus on, do I feel more connected to this therapist over time? And do I trust them to help me with the issues that I face over time? What I see sometimes is clients will work with a therapist and they don't see their life changing, and so they work with another therapist and another and another and another and another, and what ends up happening is that this person is not able to make the improvements in their life that they're looking for because they haven't given any one therapeutic relationship enough of a chance to make a big difference. So I encourage you, if you find someone who you trust and you believe can help you, stick it out with that person, commit to your process, and I wish you the best of luck. If watching this video makes you feel like I might be a good therapist for you and you live in the LA area, please reach out. I'll leave my number on the screen and I would love to hear from you. I offer a 15-minute free consultation to anybody who wants it, so I hope to hear from you soon. And take good care. Bye.