5 Things That Make Therapy Not Work

Anyway, okay.

So what makes you a bad therapy patient? Before I dive into that, actually, I want to take a little detour and talk about what to do before you actually start therapy.

I think that's really important too.

I think in general, like how to make the most of your treatment, even from the very beginning, I think is really helpful.

So the number one thing... is really do your research and look around for what therapist is a good fit for you.

Even I, who knows a lot about this, will, if I'm looking for a new therapist, I will go on my insurance, look up, yeah, I'm looking for a provider, looking up who's the therapist who's like closest to me or has an availability and I'll pick them and I'll do a consultation session or call with them.

And then I'm like, well, now that I've opened up to them, I'll just kind of ride this out until I don't need therapy anymore, right? And a lot of people don't realize that it's okay and expected to look around, to shop around, to try out different therapists at first, get on a call with them for a few minutes, get on a Zoom, maybe do an initial session and just see what the fit feels like.

A lot of people, when they even do that, it's natural to just like, tell them all your problems, right? Because you're like, oh, finally, I got a therapist.

Let me just tell you everything.

But a better way to go about that is asking them questions, asking them, what is your specialty? What kind of patients do you usually treat? What are your strengths as a therapist? What modalities or types of therapy have you been trained in? When I talk about these problems of mine, what do you think about them? What do you think is the way that I should...

If we work together, what is the way that I should address these problems? So you really get a sense of how that therapist is thinking and what their background is.

Very, very important.

Two parts of that fit with a therapist are, one, their specialty, whether they have training or experience in the thing that you're looking for help on.

So if you're looking for a therapist for eating disorders and the therapist doesn't have a lot of experience with that experience, They could be great, it could be great therapy, but you might have a better experience with someone who has kind of behavioral therapy for eating disorders or has worked in an eating disorder clinic or has had those patients before.

Right.

So looking into their background and thinking, OK, I'm struggling with work anxiety or I'm struggling with the relationships.

And does that person how what's their what's their background? What's their training in that? The other part is just this human connection.

Do you feel safe with this person? I can't tell you exactly how to pick that.

Sometimes that takes a lot of self-awareness on your end to be like, what is the type of person, a type of therapist that will actually help me towards my goals? It's not always the one that is fun or that you like or that's just very nice.

That might be great.

So you might feel safe with them, which is important.

But another piece is who's going to get me to change? What kind of therapist is going to actually help me get to where I need to go? Sometimes a fun, soft, sweet therapist...

feels good, but they're not going to push you in the way that you need.

So this is time for you to be really honest with yourself and say, if I want to get the most out of therapy, What kind of person is going to be like that? Is it male or female or non-binary? Do they have a certain religious background, political background? Are they warm? Are they empathetic? Or are they very strict and firm and direct? Are they funny? Like, is it in person? Is it online? right so all of these things even group therapy too think about that and also think about what kind of practice they're in if they are in their own practice and they're like just solo they just have their own practice that's going to have a lot of a lot of benefits like they might have flexibility they might have negotiable rates I don't know but if they're in a group practice that has different pros and cons.

Sometimes people in group practices, sometimes therapists in group practices have a lot of resources, right? They have other colleagues that they can consult with.