Thoughts on younger Ts?

Can you explain what happened with their countertransference and how it did damage?

I can, but it's definitely not a simple or short answer.
I'll write it up and make a separate thread for it when I get home in a couple hours so that I'm not hijacking this one.

I prefer an older therapist.

Another profession where experience tends to of help is teaching. While experienced teachers can get set in their ways (fortunately most experienced teachers I work with aren't like this but they are definitely out there), there is much to be said for having a breadth of experience. I've been teaching 34 years (and I reinvent the wheel every semester), and I work with some very young, fresh-out-of-college teachers. I LOVE their enthusiasm and energy. Those that can have that energy AND know how to channel it into good teaching practice and professionalism do quite well. However, I've seen far too many who have extremely poor boundaries -- they get too "friendly" with the students as they try to be the "super-teacher" every kid likes, and then when the students start taking advantage of that, they have a very difficult time reining it in. That lack of experience can put them in really poor and professionally precarious circumstances, not due to ill-intent, but simply due to not really knowing any better. Some people don't have an innate professional sixth sense. They just could not imagine the problems they might be creating because they didn't have the experience to be proactive and predictive of rather standard teaching issues.

That's where mentoring is really important in education. Having experienced teachers keeping an eye on lesson plans, classroom management issue, parental contact, etc., can absolutely save an inexperienced teacher from literally losing their position from making inexperienced and unprofessionally poor judgment calls.

Hopefully, younger and less experienced therapists have the mentoring of experienced therapists who can steer them toward professional boundaries and wise client decisions, but unfortunately that kind of mentoring isn't consistently happening across the board (any more than it is in education), leaving clients in the hands of some young therapists who mean well, but are learning, often through mistakes they are making with clients, much to the client's detriment. Mentoring is also a positive tool in keeping more experienced therapists (and teachers) on their own game, reminding them constantly of their own professional standards and methods as they guide others.

I was fortunate to have had experienced therapists who also worked in mentoring and educating younger therapists as well as working collaboratively with therapists in their practice. They weren't trying to do their work without input from other professionals around them.

Okay! I'm just curious how this plays out as I am new to therapy and my therapist is the warmer, expressive kind... we often go over time and sometimes he seems worried about me.

Lots of very interesting responses here!

So I had a phone call with the younger T I first mentioned to arrange therapy and also so I could ask her some questions. (And suss her out!) I knew from speaking to her it was not going to work. She was full of what felt like anxious energy, really keen and accommodating and sort of put words in my mouth.. "Ah, so you're feeling X at the moment" which I had never said I felt, but she presumed.

I like my Ts to be very calm and relaxed and to allow me lots of space on that first phone call, instead she made me feel sort of anxious/uncomortable.

I feel bad as I'm sure she's a good therapist but the things that make me not want to see her, I do think have to do with her age unfortunately.

I don't see what those things have to do with her age. It just seems like her personality and style of relating weren't for you.

The amount of ageism on this thread is frankly embarrassing.

I don't know. That sort of canned "trained" response seems like a voice/therapist of inexperience, using "technique" rather than just communicating without being so obviously "therapisty." I don't see most here engaging is ageism so much as preference for certain things that, for them, do tend to correlate with either age or experience. Most here have said they realize those things might be found in younger therapists, but they personally haven't found it.

a) A person's age does not necessarily correlate to their level of experience. My T is young and has a decade of experience. I know Ts in their fifties and sixties who have only recently trained.

b) Making assumptions about what 'corellates with age' is exactly what I'm talking about. It's just ageism.

c) I don't believe that most people who've posted have said that at all. I also believe their anecdotal experience is exactly as valid as mine. And mine is that age has had absolutely no bearing on how effective my therapists have been.

In fact - many people here don't appear to have ever even tried seeing a younger therapist, so they aren't qualified to make any judgements whatsoever about what younger therapists are like. They are just acting on their prejudice.

a. Never said it did. I personally speak of life experience AND therapy professional experience together. I wouldn't want an inexperienced therapist no matter what the age.

b.It isn't assumptions when a person repeatedly experiences that correlation and finds a person's age and life experience to be helpful to their own therapy effectiveness. That isn't ageism. It is a conclusion drawn from personal experience. Ageism would be "All young therapist suck" or "All old therapists are the best" with an unwillingness to see there are probably exceptions to one's viewpoint. Most here are are not speaking in absolutes; absolutes are almost always fallacious.

c. And yes, all of us are working with anecdotal experience. This is hardly a scientific forum. So why the accusation of "ageism" on those of us who have a different experience concerning this. Seems rather judgmental or perhaps reactive.

My therapists have all been older than me. I would be okay with seeing a younger therapist but I would prefer that they have some experience. My first T even though she was probably in her 60's was just out of school and didn't have any experience with some of my issues so I felt like a guinea pig.

In about ten years I’m going to be “that T” - fresh out of school and no experience. And in my mid-fifties. It scares the crap out of me.

I mostly care about age as it correlates with both professional experience and life experience. Obviously not a one to one correlation, but still a significant one. And since I'm absolutely utterly done with giving inexperienced therapists a chance, there does tend to be a certain age minimum.

My personal interactions with therapists who were in their 20s were all completely terrible, which I do think is a function of their experience being too limited for my personal needs. I've had both good and bad experiences with therapists ranging from 30s to 70s. But whether coincidental or not, both of the really good experiences I've had in therapy (about 10 years apart from one another) were with therapists about 15 years older than me. If I had to look for a new therapist (which I dearly hope doesn't happen for years) I might try to hedge my bets by looking for someone in that age range.

Ex-T was younger than me, though only by a year. Current T is a couple years older than me. Every other T has been a lot older than me. The thing that I actually prefer when my T is closer to my age is that there isn't any maternal transference. For some reason, I just don't see them as mother figures to me. Other than that, age doesn't make a difference for me.

It's really about the "fit" and personality; not age.