Depression – Therapist-Patient Fit

Transcript

When you’re meeting your therapist for the first time, it can often be difficult to know, is this the right therapist for me? What you’re looking for is what we call fit or patient therapist fit. What that means is that the personality of the therapist fits your needs as a patient. That doesn’t mean the therapist needs to be your best friend, but it does mean that the therapist needs to be able to push you when you need to be pushed and at the same time help you along through your journey. If your first therapist or your first experience with therapy didn’t go exactly the way you wanted, there’s a good chance that it was related to fit and if so, give it another try and see if you can find a therapist that might fit your needs a little bit better. Don’t be afraid to tell your therapist what you need or if you feel the fit isn’t exactly right. It’s your therapy. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Therapists are trained to recognize a good fit with a patient and a therapist, and if they feel that it’s not a good fit, they’ll refer you to someone else. It’s kind of like if you go to see a dentist for a broken bone, that dentist isn’t going to be able to help you, and so they’ll refer you to a doctor that will be able to help.