Month: August 2011

You may be asking yourself, “How do I find a California therapist or helping professional who can actually help me?” It’s an important question. After all, what have you lost if you to choose the wrong therapist? How much time will you waste that could have been spent making progress? Fortunately, a brief conversation before you and your prospective therapist meet, and then some careful observations once you select one, can help you feel confident with your choice.

Before You Meet

Speak with your helping professional or their office before you schedule an appointment. Ask how much experience the therapist has working with people facing issues similar to yours (experience, for example, providing couples counseling if you’re a couple, seeing teens if you’re a teen (or parenting one), or working with children if you want therapy for your child). Your therapist should have had at least several years of experience working with people that are likely to face issues similar to yours.

If you briefly explain your situation and ask the therapist how they would proceed, they should make mention of conducting a thorough assessment to determine ALL the relevant social, environmental, and background factors. They should then talk about creating a treatment plan that will address the most critical issues identified during the assessment.

Next find out if the therapist has met the requirements for licensing. This can be done for a California counselor, therapist, or coach by visiting this California Board of Behavioral Sciences website. Literally anyone can go to a brief training (or sleep through it) and call themselves a coach or, in some states, even a counselor. By choosing a helping professional who has been licensed, you can be sure they have met all the requirements the state knows are needed before a therapist can be helpful.

But even being very careful ahead of time, you will still want to use your first session or two to learn even more about the therapist you have chosen.

Your First Few Sessions

During your first few sessions you will be able to get more evidence that you have chosen someone who is likely to be able to help you. Here are some tell-tale signs of a good therapist:

First Two Session

During your first two sessions a good therapist will:

✓ Explain the process—what you can expect from the therapist, and what the therapist expects of you.
✓ Help you to feel comfortable and welcome.
✓ Begin an assessment—that is, ask a lot of questions about you and your situation (family, history, etc.) and the issue you want help with.
✓ Try to understand and know you as an individual—asks questions that will clarify the details and your feelings about your situation.

By the Third Session

✓ You should feel comfortable with your helping professional by the third session. Most people don’t feel comfortable with everyone. It’s possible that your therapist has mannerisms that annoy you or that remind you of someone else. If you are unable to feel comfortable with your therapist by the third session, and you cannot talk with him/her about it, consider changing therapists.
✓ By this time you should know the plan that you and your therapist will be following in order to help you. The plan should make sense and include steps you have, by this time in therapy, already begun working on or talking about.

Every Session

✓ Demonstrates good listening through eye contact, nodding, and responding back to you about what you’ve said.
✓ Follows up on what was discussed or worked on in the last session.
✓ Keeps the session focused on the real problem or progress toward your goals.
✓ Gives you something to work on or read or think about before the next session.

Bottom Line

In addition to having been licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, the right therapist for you will be one who is able to create a good relationship AND focus on your issues in a helpful way. You should feel like your therapist both cares about you as a person, and levels with you as a professional. Therapy work can be emotionally difficult.  It helps to do that work with someone you trust to know what they’re doing and someone who cares about you.

Will couples counseling help? There are ways to tell.

Behavioral science now knows some of the predictors for a positive outcome in marriage or couples counseling, marriage therapy, or relationship coaching. For most couples a positive outcome means that they make their relationship considerably better—they reduce the number or severity of arguments, for example, or they start wanting to spend more time together. But not everyone who seeks marriage or relationship counseling agrees. Some people who see a relationship expert have no intention of working things out. You may wonder why they would even bother. There are legitimate reasons. For example, even though they know they’re headed for a separation or divorce, people want professional support through the breakup, to ease the transition, or to provide extra support to a partner or to children who they fear will be hurt by the breakup.

Social Pressure sometimes “causes” couples counseling.

Our society puts certain expectations on couples—especially married couples. Because of this, people who have already decided to leave their partner sometimes come to counseling to satisfy their friends and family that they did everything possible to make it work. Such people often seek counseling, either alone or with their partner, to—in a sense—get the therapist’s “blessing” on their pending break up, so they can walk away knowing they did everything they could to save the relationship.

Is there a possible positive outcome in such cases?

A positive outcome when one of the partners wants to end the relationship can occur in one of two ways: first, during therapy one of the partners can shift in his/her thinking about the possibilities for the relationship; or second, a third alternative is developed—an alternative that involves something different, but workable for both partners.

"Are there ways to predict the chances of success 
when one partner has given up on the relationship?"

Even though the outcome of marriage counseling can’t be predicted with certainty no matter what the circumstances, there are some things that can increase the likelihood of couples counseling leading to a higher level of bliss.

1. The amount of time it’s been since partners felt loving feelings toward one another.When a couple sees the therapist right after noticing their loving feelings wane—such as within a few months—it is highly likely that the couple can get back to those recent good feelings. On the other hand, if it has been many years since those loving feelings came into the relationship, the journey can be longer and more difficult, and a positive outcome less certain.
2. A willingness and ability to work through hard times. Relationship improvement is very hard work, and along the way couples have to face some of the hardest things they’ve ever faced. In many cases the real problem is something that one or both partners have been unintentionally working hard not to face. Facing those things is not easy, and because change is hard, usually things have to seem even a bit worse before they can get better. Couples who are willing to face the hardships of change–sometimes extreme hardships–usually have better outcomes than couples not willing.
3. A willingness to change yourself first. Partners often feel like their partner has to change first in order for the relationship to improve. Think about it. If your partner has to change first, and if in his/her mind YOU have to change first, what’s the likelihood that either of you will change? A relationship is like a ballroom dance. The truth is, when you yourself start dancing significantly differently, your partner will have to adapt. It doesn’t even make sense to think in terms of your partner adapting to a change you haven’t even made yet. When even one partner comes in–sometimes without their partner ever attending–but that partner is willing to change the way he/she is in the relationship, the relationship almost always improves. When both partners attend and are willing to change, outcomes are even better.

The one sure way to tell whether couples counseling will help your relationship.

There is one way to know for sure whether your situation is one that can be helped by couples counseling.

What is that way? Try it.  Attending couples counseling with an open mind and a qualified relationship therapist is the only way to know for sure whether it can help.

To read about choosing a therapist, click here>>.