How to Know If You Have a Good Therapist

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“More often than not, you will find an empathic, attentive person sitting in the therapist’s chair. Someone who listens, who makes you feel understood; and you begin to trust that the therapy might actually work. This partnership between a client and their therapist is called the “therapeutic alliance.” It is defined by a sense of safety and trust, and a mutual agreement on which tasks and goals are worthy of pursuing inside therapy. In order to know which mechanisms help people make a change, researchers at Australian Catholic University; and associates decided to look at all successful mediational studies ever done on any psychosocial intervention in a randomized controlled trial targeting a mental health outcome. The results indicated that psychological flexibility and mindfulness account for nearly half of successfully identified change processes.

In the long run, your own improvement and accomplishing the goals of therapy is the most important bottom line, but that’s in the future when you are in therapy. Processes of change come first so they provide more immediate guidance. So, yes, find a therapist who uses methods that have been scientifically shown to work, and we know why. But then make sure your relationship with your therapist is defined by trust, safety, and agreement about how to proceed in therapy. And then check to see if the therapist models acceptance and non-judgment, attention to the present moment from a deeper more “spiritual” sense of self, and commitment to a values based approach, even to you. And over time look to see if your therapist helps you take a more aware, open, and values-based approach to your own life.

Key Points

• The therapeutic alliance is defined by a sense of safety and trust, and a mutual agreement on which goals are worthy of pursuing inside therapy.

• Only four studies can identify the working alliance between therapist and client as a functionally important pathway of change.

• People are lifted up by relationships in which the other person models, instigates, and supports psychological flexibility and mindfulness.”

Read the whole article at Psychology Today

#Therapy #Alliance #Flexibility #Mindfulness

💬 What do you imagine a good therapist to be like?