confusedgurl, I'm like you and Echoes, liking the "best" and good degrees. I was lucky because I got a good PhD psychologist and saw her for 9 years. Then I moved and had to quit therapy. But 9-10 years later I wanted therapy again and looked up my old therapist and found her and called her and started seeing her again! What I found was she had changed and grown too! It was really odd because we were often re-exploring the things we'd explored 10 years earlier, often in the same way and there was a lot of deja vu feeling like we'd been there before but either I or she or both of us would respond slightly differently/better this time.

I think it is how old a therapist is in relation to us (mine was slightly older than I was, maybe 10-12 years) and how much life experience they've had. My therapist was good when I met her but originally but she was a "new" therapist, had been something else before she became a therapist. But that she was older than I was and had some "life" experience helped her I think while she got experience being a therapist. When I saw her later, she had had 20-25 years of being a therapist too so she was doubly good :-)

So, maybe look at the age of a therapist and how long they've been a therapist rather than so much their degree. One of my best other therapists was a group therapist and she was just an MSW. But she was 25-30 years my senior and had been a therapist that long (and had a personality from here to there :-)

If you "click" with a therapist, don't worry so much about their degree or training. They'll help make it work for the two of you because they probably feel the connection with you too!