I voted referral, which is true for my current P, but the previous 35 Ts (not kidding) were all cold call and/or website. Which sort of says something about the calibre of Ts picked via yellow pages or their own websites. Lol or it says something about the intractability of my issues.

This is UK mind you and probably different from how things pan out in the States.

What screwed my therapy up was not being able to gain access to those Ts with the training/experience needed to help me - hence having to work my way through dozens of cold call Ts before finally finding one who was able to give me a referral to someone who then referred me on to someone else who had the level of expertise I needed.

Though it's early days yet (I've only seen this new P - clinical psychologist - about a dozen times so far) I'm impressed by her attitude and approach and think that at last I have a chance of getting help through therapy.

So I suppose if anyone were looking for a new T, I'd suggest trying really hard to get a recommendation or a referral. Which is not to say that cold call or self advertising Ts or those who put themselves on a public register of Ts are all useless by any means, just that you might have to pan through a lot of dross before you hit paydirt.

Torn