How to Choose a Therapist: Questions Worth Asking First

Intro

We have all been there, needing support when the going gets tough. And it’s important to choose the right people to lean on when you encounter challenges in life, work, or relationships. It may be important to remember that difficulties are always temporary; they present opportunities for growth and change: embrace the possibility that everyone can evolve, and you can move beyond the obstacles you face.

Our market offers dozens of methods — from the abstract and new-age to the academic and analytical — and hundreds of therapists ready to help. That’s a good thing. But which one, and which approach, do you actually choose?

This short article is meant to help you decide. I’ve led sessions in humanistic and transpersonal (psycho)therapy since 1996, and taught these approaches since 2010. What follows are the questions I’d invite you to sit with before you book your first appointment. Take them slowly, if you will.

The therapist’s experience

Watch the promises. Claims like “My success rate is 100% — every client leaves completely satisfied” can come across as immature, regardless of the person’s training or method.

A 100% success rate in this work is pure fiction, no matter the approach. The same goes for anyone promising to resolve your difficulties in two sessions. It sounds wonderful, but it can’t be real. (Psycho)therapy can take dozens of sessions — sometimes far more.

So ask:

How much practice does this therapist have?
What kinds of difficulties have they actually helped with?
What do their clients say?

When a therapist seems ungrounded, lacks real insight into how mind, emotion, and body work, or reaches for abstract causes (read: past lives) for very concrete problems, it often points to limited life experience — and sometimes to gaps in training as well.

And one more question, the one people skip:

Is the therapist genuinely happy and fulfilled in their own life?

A therapist can only carry you as far as the point they’ve reached themselves. If someone has no fulfilling personal relationship, they can’t truly help you build one. The same holds for money, health, work, rest, and intimacy. Please consider how your therapist lives in the area where you’re struggling.

How they work

Find out exactly what’s on offer. Is it an abstract, impersonal session of working on the aura and chakras and cutting etheric cords — or something more concrete? There’s no single right answer here, but you deserve to know which you’re buying.

It’s worth understanding that some approaches ask very little of you. Psychiatric care often centers on medication; analytic approaches center on interpretation; certain energy-based methods stay impersonal by design. Each can have its place and might indeed help you.

But here’s the honest question:
How do you make real progress in your life if you yourself aren’t engaged in it, heart and all?

So consider what you’re being offered:

Does the therapist (try to) take responsibility for your life and your choices — telling you what’s wrong with you and what you ought to feel and must do?
Does the therapist merely interpret your symptoms and teach you how to handle them, or is there more to it?
Does this method support your choices and your responsibility?

We all have our own way and capacities for exploring different depths in life. It’s totally okay to stick to the surface—whether it’s physically, mentally, or energetically—especially when it suits us or the situation.

But the real change asks you to go considerably deeper; it is as simple as that.

What do you actually want?

You might want to be honest with yourself, because the answer influences everything else:

Do you want to truly, lastingly change — or only to understand your difficulties intellectually, through one theory or another?
Do you want to feel better in the moment, be topped up with energy, or go for something more thorough?
Do you want to remove the causes of your troubles, or, with a pill or a wave of impersonal energy, simply forget them for a while?
Do you want to change yourself for good, or to keep changing things on the outside (the color of your clothes, your phrasing, your breathing rhythm, your behavior) while still complaining about the system and everyone that is different?

And maybe the most important one:

Will the therapist actually help you toward greater fulfillment — or quietly tie you to them, so you keep coming back for months and years (for a fee, of course)?

Every approach has its strengths. What matters is what you want it to achieve.

Ethics

What are the therapist’s ethical principles? Can you expect honest, professional, objective, yet warm, support — or is the whole thing vague and ungrounded?

Watch especially for the misuse of the therapeutic position: the “extra favors” after sessions, the crossing of lines around sex, money, and power. Ask how the therapist handles the moment a client develops feelings for them. Sometimes it does happen, and how they answer tells you a great deal.

What does the therapist want?

The therapist’s own intent matters as much as their method. What are they trying to get from helping people like you, right now?

Is it only the income?
Self-affirmation built on other people’s problems?
Will they let you become dependent on them — and do you want that?

Furthermore:

Do they offer support outside sessions, and if so, why?
Do you want to grow on your own, or in emotional dependence on your therapist?

Will they genuinely help you stand on your own two feet, for good, or just analyze you, hand you labels, and tell you what to feel and do with your life?

These are fine distinctions, but don’t overlook them, I invite you,

Affinity

How do you feel after the first conversation?
Does something about the person put you off — too old, too young, hard to let your guard down? Will you be able to open up to them?

Watch attraction, too. If you find a therapist strongly attractive — physically, intellectually — you won’t really be able to work on yourself and your problems with them.

Do not miss these two rather important facts:

And are the two of you at least roughly on the same planet in terms of the level of awareness?
If you’ve already grown quite authentic, a (psycho)analytical approach won’t reach you.
And the other way around: if all you want is intellectual and temporary relief — to understand your troubles and no more — humanistic therapy will probably be far more than you’re looking for.

Gender

In general, it is advisable for individuals to seek therapy with a therapist of the same gender. This often creates a more comfortable environment, allowing clients to feel at ease when discussing personal topics.

The shared gender identity can indeed foster a sense of understanding and camaraderie, helping clients to open up more readily and build trust more quickly in the therapeutic relationship. However, this is not a hard-and-fast rule.

Price

Money, money, money; it seems that what it all comes down to, is money.
So, be careful, I invite you:

Is the price acceptable to you?
Is it set clearly and fixed for a meaningful stretch of time, or does it keep shifting?
Does the therapist expect “extra” payments or favors?

Find out exactly what you’ll be paying for. Your life is precious, and your money was (probably) hard-earned. Don’t buy fog and empty promises — unless that’s genuinely what you’re after.

A closing thought

Let therapy and your therapist be support and nothing more. Lean on yourself and your own inner resources before you lean on anything outside you – if true, deep and permanent transformation is your calling.

If not, well, this still holds true:

Therapy and therapists can never give you more than you can make of yourself.

I wish you all the best.

– Edmond Cigale, PhD