which one to pick

Ugh.
I've been given two referrals for a new T.
I'm a middle aged Caucasian female.
One T is an older (50-50?) Caucasian male but what I've seen online has a full time private practice and wears crazy shirts and helps a lot of LGBTQ youth. I'm in a minority group myself. But can't trust guys.
Other T is my age, Indian, female and works part time in private practice and picked by my last T that recently quit private practice. I miss him so much. Anyway.
Last T did refer me to someone else, but an older male, smaller than me, very quiet, and I just felt utterly creeped out. Not what I expected because he works with children.
Initially, I only wanted someone as a back up plan for my meds because my GP isn't comfortable with that as I'm on a high dose.
Have been seeing a psychologist but only have a few sessions left with her. and she says it's possible I have PTSD. I know I need to work through everything that happened in my marriage.
The last three years was unpacking my childhood trauma and dealing with the practicalities of the split, police, court, etc. And now things have settled down, stuff from the marriage is coming up and I need to dump that somewhere to be able to really heal. I thought I wouldn't deal with that stuff until I met someone who would make me want to get over the past and be able to have a healthy relationship.
But now I feel like I have to deal with it now because of the PTSD and I want to get better. But I need a solid, stable safe place to dump it, not ad hoc monthly appointments to keep my head above the water in supporting the kids with their dad.

p.s. I don't really want to have to see both for one session each to get a feel for it. I paid $350 just to find out I didn't really like the other one. Would've been good if I liked him because I like the practice. But what can you do?

Can you do a quick phone chat to see if you could get some type of vibe off of them? Several in my area are willing to talk for 15-20 mins on the phone as an introduction. I thought I had found someone that would be a good replacement for my T when I thought I was going to leave her. We played phone tag a bit and how she left a voicemail rubbed me the wrong way. Not a good way to start something when we hadn't even met.

Crappy thing is I'm deaf so I email the practice directly. Bummer.

Ah, I didn't know that.. yeah, adds another layer to the complexity. I guess another option is to ask how they handle things that you need... like lets say you need or work best with open out of session contact... so asking them what their policy is especially for the one that works part time.

Or maybe out and out asking if they would be willing to meet for a short `15-20 min meet and greet consult just to see if you'd be a good match, letting them know about your deafness as a reason why a phone call would not work, and if so what would be the charge on that? Might get something there might not. Might also be good to know what their experience is working with the deaf community - or do you already know these individuals have experience with the deaf community? Is LGBTQ important to you or just the knowledge that he has experience working with a minority group?

I feel like I'm sitting here with the white board and the +/- columns for them... ultimately it's got to be a gut thing - for me. That's kind of hard to come by without some level of interaction.

Thanks for the feedback.
Yeah I don't know what I'm working with either!
Maybe I'll go with the guy. If he's used to working with minority groups, it just means that he has an idea of sub-cultures.
This sounds nuts, but he's also Jewish which is closer to my old religion of Christianity that I was raised in, as opposed to Hinduism. I get that we are a melting pot of cultures, religions, etc. but maybe I'd settle in quicker with someone who is used to the usual holiday customs around here too. Who knows really because she may end up more fun for me. I wish I had some kind of sign of who to pick. Both referrals come from people who I would trust with my life, so it's like trying to choose between them.
I even looked at things like travel distance, parking, etc.

Well I think it's really personal for each one of us, but these seem like sound reasons to choose the T. I think it's so important to be able to feel comfortable.
When I started therapy, I just applied to the clinic for an appointment (there's a group of Ts and I didn't specify to see any particular one). I was really shocked to find that T was male - totally my prejudice, I was picturing psychologists as female. But now I'm so comfortable that I think that if, for some reason, I had to change Ts, I would deliberately look for a male T. Also because I had a difficult relationship with my mother, and working with a male T maybe there is no tricky transference as he doesn't resemble my mother in any way shape or form!

Hi Iheartjacques -

I worked with a young deaf women a few years ago (she was a college aged intern with my work team). For phone calls, she often used a phone service... I don't know who they were (I'm sorry!) but she'd connect with them via computer, and they'd call in to our meetings... she'd be able to sign with them from her computer, and see them signing back to translate, and then they'd speak for her on the call.

It seemed to work pretty well (it was a bit difficult on calls with lots of people, because the interpreter would sometimes have trouble breaking in to speak). The only weirdness for us was when the interpreter was male, and he'd introduce himself as our female colleague (imagine a deep male voice saying, "Hi, this is Sally!").

Do you have access to anything like that, and do you think it would be helpful? I can imagine that you wouldn't want to use that for therapy - yikes - because of how personal it is, but I wonder if it might be a way to do an initial phone meet-and-greet, if it could give you an idea of how the potential therapist thinks and communicates, without diving in to your personal stuff?

Obviously, it would be a million times better if they'd give you a free 15-20 minutes in the office though!

(And, apologies if you already know about these services. It struck me as something that could be helpful, but if you're already know/use these regularly, I don't want to be patronizing or annoying!)

The one that my coworker used was free, I believe... I just have no clue who they were, since I never needed to reach them directly.

Good luck. I hope you're able to find what you need!

Edit to add: I don't know if she used video conferencing and sign language, or just a text interface. The text interface would make sense, and wouldn't involve cameras!