one persons great therapist can be another person flop of a therapist. basically the way to finding a therapist that will fit what you need is by sitting down and writing out why you want or need to be in therapy, what your problems are and what you want to accomplish during therapy time and brain storm possible things to do during therapy to solve those problems.

once you have that you write down some questions that you want to ask a therapist - qualifications, therapy approach, cost, after hours protocal should you need the therapist after hours and their protocal on self injury and suicidal behaviour if you have problems with those things.

Then you open the phone book to the topics of - mental health, community services, psychiatrists, psychologists, and atart calling those numbers in the phonebook and asking the receptionist if they have any therapists that work on your specific problems and if so ask for a consultation / intake appointment with a therapist. if you have a preference male or female let the receptionist know.

when you go to your consultation / intake appointment take your questios and paper on why you want to be in therapy and wht your problems are and possible things to do during therapy time with you.

at the intake appointment you will most likely meet with a receptionist/therapist to fill out the paperwork and briefly discuss why you want to be in therapy, what your problems are, some ideas for solving those problems and wat type of therapist you are looking for.

That intake receptionist/therapist hands in your paperwork to one of the supervisors who assigns their agency therapists their caseloads. that supervisor will match your paperwork and information that you gave during the intake appointment to their therapists that have an opening in their caseload and you will get a call from the therapist that is assigned to you.

In some agencys if you have a specific disorder you will automatically be assigned to the therapist that works with that disorder regardless of what your intake informations states for example in the agency where I recieve my therapy I was automatically assigned LL because she is the one in the agency that works with Dissociative Identity Disorder which is what I have.

Therapists cant fix you they are just the tool. they can listen and suggest possible solutions to your problems but only you can do those suggestions and only you can take care of your problems.

Sometimes therapists don't always say and do things that we want to hear or want people to do. the therapist isn't there to be a friend. They are there to challenge us to be at our best and challenge us to look at sides of the problem that we would otherwise ignore or pass over. Sometimes their doing this seems like they are disregarding our feelings because we don't want to hear what they are saying, or feel what they are making us feel.

One thing I do is I am up fromnt with my therapist. if she says or does something that seems uncaring or too hard on me I tell her so that she has the opportunity to explain where she is coming from. Sometimes it results in my seeing her side of things and other times it ends up being she saw a problem where there is none and appologizes for jumping too soon without knowing everything about the situation.

I can tell you fr5om being on therapist 19, you are not going to find a therapist you are buddy buddy with 100% of the time because its not their job to only do and say what we want them to. to get that that is what friends are for. a therapist is supposted to remain neutral and see all sides of things not just what the client wants them to see.

Good luck on your search for a therapist.