Good question. I think two of the most important qualities in a therapist are empathy and a non-judgmental attitude. I also think it's important for them to be able to read people well enough to know what each patient needs. We're all so different and we need different things in our therapy.

The therapist who helped me the most was the one who recognized that I respond well to logic. I need to understand why things happen, why I do the things I do, and I need logical techniques to work on to help me through my problems. I had agoraphobia and I needed to understand why. I needed to understand what triggered my panic attacks and why -- and he helped me understand all of those things and everything felt logical to me. That's what works for me. I felt totally comfortable with him. I felt like I could share anything with him and he never judged. He was very understanding.

I had another therapist who wanted to talk a lot about my childhood. It was like she was determined to find something disturbing in my past -- even though there isn't anything there. That frustrated me. I felt like she was wasting my time. I was there for help with agoraphobia and panic attacks. I believed (and still do believe) that my agoraphobia was triggered by being debilitated with Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo for 3 years. I didn't have a traumatic childhood. I had a wonderful childhood with loving, supportive parents and that seemed to disappoint her. She often seemed disappointed or disapproving when I didn't give her the answers she seemed to want to hear. I wasn't going to make stuff up just to please her, though. She would also look at me sometimes like I was speaking a foreign language when I would tell her how I was feeling. She seemed to have very definite expectations of how I SHOULD feel and made no effort to understand how I really DID feel. She didn't help me at all.