Finding a Psychotherapist

Whether it is your first time to psychotherapy or you are looking to find another therapist, it is important to consider a few things.  Yes, they need to be a licensed psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist or licensed clinical social worker.  But the main consideration is, do you like them as a person, do you feel more relaxed or hopeful after you see them?  Do you feel safe from judgement as you share various aspects of your life?
The training a psychotherapist has undergone is important but the feeling you have with them is even more important.

Psychotherapy definition:   Healing of the psyche.
The origin of psyche:  via Latin from Greek psukhē  ‘breath, life, soul’.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/psyche

Psychotherapy has evolved over the years to provide the following:
a healing of emotional struggle

• healing confusion about past relationships
• understanding how to live well with our present culture
• provide ways to navigate present relationships and not do harm
• to live life with some sense of meaning
• to accomplish a reasonable sense of happiness and appreciation
• a way to experience quality in intimate relationships with family and friends
• a teaching of how to suffer when the time comes;  such as in loss and trauma from the past or in the present.
  

A healing of:  ‘breath, life, soul’.  This is why it is important to find a psychotherapist that feels right for you, because psychotherapy is not just about getting rid of feelings we don’t like but an evolution of our personality.

The magazine, Psychology Today has a good source for finding a psychotherapist in your area. Psychology Today therapists give you a picture and a little bio on their approach and attitude about psychotherapy.  It can give you a feel for who each person is before meeting them.  That way you might narrow down your search for two or three you’d like to meet before entering into a regular schedule of sessions.

There are many types of psychotherapy and many will claim they are the best.  The most important is in finding a psychotherapist you like and feel that you can trust, until you don’t, until it is time to move on.  It may be time to take a break from psychotherapy or to find another therapist that suits your newly discovered need;  such as, a need to go deeper, marriage therapist, or a women’s or men’s group, etc.

So, I would define psychotherapy as a process of discovery with a psychotherapist who understands the relationship of symptoms such as anxiety and depression to unconscious confusion and unconscious potential.  When negative feelings and memories get repressed, so does the good stuff;  such as, wisdom, empathy, and the ability to connect to oneself and to others in a meaningful way.