I hope that works out for you. I believe in the immediate connection thing. I have a long history of not doing well with many, many therapists. I've had 2 that I did great with, the current one and one in college who was very much like the current one. Otherwise I had a woman I saw for nearly 4 years and didn't realize that she wasn't actually helping me much, not getting me to focus on anything ever and we spent most of our time just chatting and the others made it for weeks. When the woman was leaving it happened with almost no warning; her husband was transferred to Europe with 4 weeks notice. She set me up with another woman in the practice but I just didn't feel the description was right for me so she also set me up to meet this male therapist who was new to the practice. I met him, realized he was so much like the other therapist I did well with and never even met the other person I was supposed to see. I've met her now, she does back-up for me if my therapist is out and she's very nice and who I probably would see if he left but I'm so glad I went with my instincts because the man I see is pretty much perfect for me. I have to work very hard with him but I've come so far in 9 years with him. And by now it is just this incredibly comfortable relationship where I can tease him or be serious with him or give medical suggestions and then switch into an hour of hard work and then back into the comfort zone. It's the perfect set-up for me, even though it can get interesting when someone knows you so well that you barely have to explain a situation before they know how you are reacting to it. Sometimes it's a bit creepy that he can practically read my mind. But I'm just so thankful I went with my instincts. I had originally set up with a friend to hold me accountable for going to 3 months of sessions before I was allowed to move on and I think it took 3 weeks before I said "never mind, I'm staying". Hundreds of hours later I trust him more than anyone else in the world. I think this shows that I mainly like male Christian therapists with PhD's born in 1957 who are musical and have very strong family lives but I'm sure there are lots of those around when I need to change? (that's only part of how alike they are).

Oops, forgot to take meds. We were having a huge storm and I got distracted by hoping the trees outside my house were ok. This is the worst storm we've had since I've lived here and I'm kind of settled in a little thicket. After some serious storm damage a few years ago when I was here dog-sitting and had to make my mom come home because of the amount of property damage (she only got to the house b/c the neighbor parked at the top of our road, climbed over downed trees for a mile, got a chainsaw and some neighbors and started cutting a path down the road) and thousands of dollars of damage and the need to walk both dogs on leases every time because their dog yard was trashed I get a little nervous about bad storms. But must take meds. Putting the computer down now.....Only nealry 2 hours late. Not that it matters anyway.....