The Most Important Question to Ask Your Potential New Therapist
Why rupture and repair are the most important part of the work
Finding a new therapist can be a challenging process — between navigating insurance, sliding scale, or private pay options, to researching and choosing which modalities would best suit your needs and goals for therapy, to understanding what you’re looking for in terms of a therapist’s style, it can feel like there are simultaneously too many options to wade through, and a dearth of clinicians who feel like they would be a good fit. There are lots of articles that will help you understand more about the different modalities (I’ve written several of them myself), which is one way to assess for compatibility. But there is one topic that rarely comes up in my consultation calls with prospective new clients that speaks to perhaps the most important aspect of a therapeutic relationship: How does the therapist handle the inevitable instances of rupture and repair?
Across modalities, one thing is clear: first and foremost, it is the relationship with the therapist that is perhaps the most powerful indicator of how effective the helping process will be. Trust is a central part of any healing relationship, and trust is a fluid, living relational experience — it can be built, earned, and deepened, and it can also be shaken or damaged. So, let’s start with some…
