Not sure about therapist

[Deleted member 38906]

My therapist isn't bad. I haven't had any issues with him. I just wonder if he's the right one and whether therapy is working.

I worry constantly whether I've chosen the right therapis and every once in a while I even reach out to a new therapist and consider switching. But once I realize I can't let go of my current T, I never follow through with the new T. I feel sort of stuck.

How do you know if therapy is working and whether you should stay with the T you've chosen? How do you calm yourself down when you panic about running out of time and not healing?

 

[Suzetig]

Firstly you need to understand why you think you're running out of time. It might be a very real worry (i.e. limited number of sessions/insurance coverage; a feeling that you're so low you might die and therapy isn't enough to hold you or an irrational fear that you have x amount of time to get better).

In terms of how you know it's working I'd be looking at what's changed since you started therapy. Are you less reactive, more able to regulate your mood, can you ground yourself better, do you understand your symptoms better. Are there things you couldn't talk about earlier in therapy that you're more able to now, is the relationship good, are you learning more skills to help in daily life.

On the other hand, you know it's not working if you feel an inappropriate dependency on your T, e.g. they're the only person you see each week, you have no other support and they aren't helping you find or use other supports. Do you spend much of your session on "weekly reporting" e.g. this week I went to the store, which was really hard for me, someone said X and I argued with them, my daughter and I aren't really speaking etc etc where you're giving a superficial account of your week. If you are doing that, is your T trying to help you go deeper?

Depending on how long you've been seeing your T you should be seeing changes from when you first started. If you aren't and it's been more than 6 months, stop. Find another T who is more effective or roll up your sleeves and do the work with the T you're with. No matter how much you like a T, how attached you feel or how scared you are there's literally no point if you aren't prepared to really make yourself vulnerable or if they aren't skilled enough to help you. 6 months in you should see some changes, even little ones. For me it was that I wasn't crying every single day - that one change took 6 months to achieve so I'm not talking about being healed, but if you don't see honest to goodness change in yourself you're wasting your time.