Rowean,
What you said about your appointment was laughable, but also made me angry. How dare they treat you like that? How dare they have such dirty chairs?
Searching for a new T over the last few months, I started having an overall category before I even considered the variations in style, approach etc, and that is - are they healers or not?
By healer I don't mean they have to have some sort of divine gift, I just mean - regardless of the type of therapy they practise - is their motivation to help people, because they care? If their primary motivation seems to be money, status, intellectual challenge, feeling better about themselves because they think they're superior, couldn't think of anything better to do etc, then in my view they're not a healer and I don't want anything to do with them.
My journey to T takes about 1 hour 15 minutes one way, and I used to do that weekly before to see a somatic therapist. It's not ideal, and sometimes getting home afterwards is difficult, but it's possible.
Can you talk for a bit on the phone with potential T's before having to make an initial appointment? I don't know how that works where you are, but here I think if someone isn't willing to talk to me for 5-10 minutes over the phone then they're not going to be the kind of person I want to see. I have a few particular questions which bring out things that are important to me - for example I ask if they've worked much with survivors of [my trauma] and then listen not only to what they answer but the words they use - do they pick up on the language I was comfortable with or do they use jargon or less positive words? etc.
What you said about your appointment was laughable, but also made me angry. How dare they treat you like that? How dare they have such dirty chairs?
Searching for a new T over the last few months, I started having an overall category before I even considered the variations in style, approach etc, and that is - are they healers or not?
By healer I don't mean they have to have some sort of divine gift, I just mean - regardless of the type of therapy they practise - is their motivation to help people, because they care? If their primary motivation seems to be money, status, intellectual challenge, feeling better about themselves because they think they're superior, couldn't think of anything better to do etc, then in my view they're not a healer and I don't want anything to do with them.
My journey to T takes about 1 hour 15 minutes one way, and I used to do that weekly before to see a somatic therapist. It's not ideal, and sometimes getting home afterwards is difficult, but it's possible.
Can you talk for a bit on the phone with potential T's before having to make an initial appointment? I don't know how that works where you are, but here I think if someone isn't willing to talk to me for 5-10 minutes over the phone then they're not going to be the kind of person I want to see. I have a few particular questions which bring out things that are important to me - for example I ask if they've worked much with survivors of [my trauma] and then listen not only to what they answer but the words they use - do they pick up on the language I was comfortable with or do they use jargon or less positive words? etc.
