Finding a New Therapist..

I lost my Pdoc, of 12 years, in June and now my therapist, who I have been with for 4 years, a few weeks ago due to her getting laid off. I feel like I am losing my whole mental health team. Starting over with a new Pdoc sucked and I have only seen my new Pdoc 2x and that was a hard adjustment.. but with my therapist being gone I am completely lost. I really trusted her and she got to know me and my issues/problems/behaviors well. I really feel like I gotta start all again from scratch.

I know it shouldn't be a big deal but for me it is. I have made so much noticeable progress with that therapist and I feel like I am going to completely back track my progress before I get assigned (or find) some one new. It's been almost 3 weeks since I have seen my therapist and I feel like I am already going crazy without someone to work through my problems with.

What are the best ways to find a new therapist/counselor? My last therapist was my only therapist. It's taking the mental health clinic I go to, too long to reassign me to someone new.. and what if I don't like the person they assign me too? I am also worried that finding some one new means that every time I express that I am feeling really low, that (s)he will try to ship me off to the hospital or to a partial hospitalization program.

Are there any tips to getting a new therapist or what the first initial appointment would be like?

I'm sorry you have to go through this. I lost a therapist really suddenly 10 years ago when she moved to another country. I thought it would be the end of the world; I liked and trusted her so much and we had a good relationship. It turned out that her leaving was the best thing that could have happened to me in terms of treatment.

The first session with the new therapist (which was done just before she left so she did talk to him about me) was mostly just talking a little about my history of therapy, what I wanted, what I wanted to be off-limits (I refused to talk to him about abuse for a while), how he felt he could help me and a little about how he operated as a therapist, etc.

The 2nd time I met him was 2 days after saying good-bye to the old therapist and so we pretty much leaped into my having a hard time which turned into a huge episode. He didn't see it as quickly as he would have today but eventually he not only figured out the episode and the triggers but he was the one who noticed that I was walking unsteadily and brought up lithium toxicity to my pdoc which I most definitely had.

I have a rather long history of trying therapists, not feeling right early on and quitting. I've only stuck it out with 3 therapists (including this one) and have seen a lot more than that. I always had a reason to leave but maybe not the best reason. So this time I asked a friend to hold me accountable for giving it a good try for 3 months (although I think there was a clause where if he agreed it was completely weird I could quit sooner). By 3 months we were deeply involved in treatment.

I did have to adjust to this therapist being more sensitive about suicidal thoughts and more willing to hospitalize. Early on he would have had me IP several times but my pdoc said I'd be ok (I'd seen her for 3 years by then so she knew and trusted me). One of those times we had quite an argument which was actually a turning point for me; I knew I really trusted him if I could argue with him and still go back. And ultimately I never was hospitalized because eventually he came to trust both me and later his ability to read me pretty well so that he pretty much always knows when it is on my mind anyway. And now I tell him most times and if he thinks there is the slightest chance he asks. Just remember that they can't make you do anything unless you are a risk to yourself or others. You can have suicidal thoughts and not require hospitalization (good thing or I'd have been living in the hospital the last 9 months or more). And you'll develop mutual trust in that area that will open communication and keep both of you from over/under reacting.

I was surprised how fast I trusted him and how quickly I realized that my prior therapist was nice to talk to but this man was going to get me better. I work hard with him while with her I spent a great deal of time talking about cats. She didn't know that much about bipolar and he did/does. He also just has the right personal style to be effective for me; he is absolutely not afraid to push me which I don't think she'd ever have done.

I don't know how to choose except to say meet with a few and feel them out. I was scheduled to meet someone else the same week I met my therapist but cancelled because I knew he was the right person after I met him. Now she is the back-up for me so if he's out for some reason she always has some idea what is going on with me and can take an emergency session on. I like her but he's still better with me.

Honestly I don't know how to find someone outside the one agency. I've been in the same place 14 years and am their longest term client. When I started there I called, answered some questions and they assigned me to the woman I saw first.

I do know that if you see someone and you don't feel comfortable or that it is a good match that you definitely can just tell them that you feel like you'd like to meet with someone else before deciding for sure who you want to work with. This looks like good coping skills, so bonus for you. I did this several times in grad school but never did land with anyone competent so I quit and had a really hard time going back when I needed to 14 years ago (I needed to go 15 years ago but it took a year to get ready).

I hope you have a fast and smooth transition.

Thank you so much for your input!

What sucks is that the mental health clinic did not assign me someone else before my therapist left, so having her fill in a new therapist and telling her/him about me is out of the question.

Yeah, that is really crappy on their part. I will say that I don't know how much my therapist now actually listened to what she said and I know he did not read a ton of old notes. He seemed to want to start somewhat fresh and form his own opinions (plus the old notes were probably mostly about cats . So I don't know what that introduction really did except make it seem a little easier for me at the time.

Because I started with him March 1 and on March 18 my assistant walked out of work and was fired, leaving me to do both our jobs plus the job of the 2nd assistant they had posted because I was already doing too much, we really jumped straight into it and there wasn't a big get-to-know you period which actually worked really well for me. He told me that I could talk to him about my feelings about the other person leaving but I didn't want to ever and now I honestly remember her last few weeks and lots of tears and then I remember starting to see him and immediately my life got really stressful and I had to rely on him for help quickly (and I had lithium toxicity too) so it all came together without much thought or even effort. He was there, I needed help and suddenly 6 months had passed and I couldn't imagine another therapist as good with me as he is. He thought he was leaving a while back and I cried and we had some really hard sessions until finally something happened and he stayed. We've come to a strange relationship because he's never treated anyone even close to 10 years before and so we have a friendship thing along with the professional thing. It's weird but it works. We just don't discuss politics.

I hope it works out for you quickly. It will work out, it may just take some time. If you have some ideas on what you want in a therapist you could give them to the office people (that would also remind them you are waiting). My center has a website with staff blurbs; that also might help you narrow down who you ask for-like if someone doesn't list mood disorder probably a no.

So I don't much great advice for finding a new therapist except keep on an open mind. If you don't mind, I'll tell you my story of keeping an open mind coupled with desperation. It has a happy ending.

I was really crashing last year around this time, my bipolar really coming out to play. I was seriously depressed all the time. I was seeing a therapist, who was very assembly line. A friend of mine who holds religious office got very concerned about me. I was really getting desperate for someone to talk to and help me figure out what was going on. My friend said maybe she could ask her son's therapist for recommendations. I was so desperate I would have taken her dry cleaner's recommendations. So I got word the child therapist only had one name to recommend, J.
When I looked at the contact info, I realized J was in a religious counselors group. They are all licensed and everything but I was on my guard. If I hadn't been so desperate, I wouldn't have made an appointment. I didn't know how to find anyone else new, so I thought I had to make a go of it.
I went in; the first thing i thought was that J was a bit...odd. But I thought again, I need to keep this going and try to get help. It's funny, because we didn't have an instant connection. J does have an uncanny knack to know when I was hedging around the truth. She was very blunt, outspoken, and didn't seem to give on whit whether i liked her to not. She fearlessly called me on all my games.
So, I kept the next appointment and kept going back. Only a month or two later, I had a really bad depressed day. She had told me they had a 24 answering service. That weekend when I talked to her on the phone, sniffling and probably not making much sense, something changed in me. I started to realize I really could talk to this woman and that I could make progress in talk therapy.
So almost a year later, I still see J every week (sometimes twice if needed). She is the best therapist I have ever had, no contest. I really can tell her anything. Yes, she is still a bit odd and calls me on all my games. It's not a perfect therapeutic relationship and she has no magic wand to fix me. But I have made more progress with her in 11 months than I did with a bunch of different counselors for the last 18 years.

(For the purposes of disclosure, we never actually talk about matters of faith. In fact, she counsels people from all sorts of religions or none at all. It doesn't seem she actually cares.)