How can I make sure therapy is better this time around?

I feel like I've wrapped my head around returning to therapy.
I have been reading some of the past pages and links about choosing a therapist, general questions to ask, how to tell if they're a good fit, how to know if it's safe, etc. and just wanted to get more input.

If you had a string of unhelpful therapists what changed with the one that was helpful?
Did you create a list of needs/wants and see that they fit it based on experiences with past therapists?
Has anyone reached out to an ex-therapist for input for a new therapist? I don't mean having them send notes or whatever. But more like insight on anything they avoided or thought would benefit you? My psychiatrist was trying to help me zero in on traits/characteristics or anything so that maybe she could recommend therapists that she knows.

Sorry, there are so many questions, while I know to go of things I may want in a therapist like their approach, experience with specific mental health concerns, familiarity with LGBT community, etc. When it comes to trying to describe out the type of person I'd trust I struggle because there's few I trusted to go off of.
I only know that I'd need to be able to be in sync with a therapist that could balance being patient and being able to push me a bit.

Actually the one thing that made my last therapy better than the others was my commitment to my saying the difficult things i didnt want to say, pretty much whenever they came to mind.

I think I've had varying degrees of success with all my previous T's except for one that I saw for four sessions and who I think was probably bat crap crazy. I don't know what made some therapy more successful than others. I know that, like unaluna, the more I talk and open up, the more progress I seem to make. HUGS Kit

That's my experience. It wasn't that my first to therapists were unhelpful. I was just in a different place. The first two times I was just trying to survive, and honestly, while I gained maybe a few insights, I stayed pretty stuck because I just personally wasn't motivated to truly move forward. It was a mindset thing at the time that I was just a miserable, hopeless person and life just wasn't going to get better.

By the time I hit my last therapist, I was much older and much more focused on doing whatever the heck I needed to do to get past my crap and get on with life. I found an impatience with the status quo (finally) and I think I would have walked through fire if that was what it took. It still took 10 years of therapy the 3rd time because . . . well . . . life kept throwing me additional curve balls adding to the original issues. But I did get there.

So it was more that there was an internal change with you, and less about whether your therapist tried to lead/push vs giving space/time to speak?

Yeah. I had spent three years living in my mothers attic, promising myself if i ever got out of there, i would be the best, most open, most forthcoming patient there ever was. If i were ever too embarrassed or whatever to say something, i would remember "this moment". And so then yeah, there were many times "that moment" gave me the push i needed.

I think its kinda the opposite value of the learned helplessness many of us practiced to survive in the environments we grew up in. Now that i think of it.

9+ unhelpful T’s. Current T is focused more on the relationship, has done more higher level trainings that give him a bigger toolbox and is naturally more nurturing.
I made a list of people that I felt had been healing to me over my lifetime and then listed traits of theirs. I used this to find T. The list ended up being totally different than what I had looked for in the past so it was very helpful.
I did get two referrals from a previous T who then became a friend/mentor. The first referral was to a CBT T and that was an OK fit but not great. The second referral was just aweful. I have also gotten referrals from others but that method never worked for me. One T I worked with did make excellent referrals to a massage T and a psychiatrist both of whom I still see.

I also think that a therapist would have to balance being patient with being able to push me a bit. I have a list of qualities a therapist would need to have. Being nurturing (and not Narcissistic and cruel) is one of the requirements.

Yeah, I was going through old entries of my journal from my last therapist. I feel like some things are practiced/learned and some just come naturally to the person, and I could feel the difference but didn't know how to name it at the time. She rarely pushed me to speak about certain things, but I still felt this pressure from the few things she would say or body language.
I compare it to my psychiatrist who is pretty laid back, but would ask a lot more questions. I'd still struggle on the topic but found it a little easier to get things out. I don't think my last therapist was bad though, and I really hope I don't encounter a bad therapist.
Can I ask how do you become confident enough in reading these things in a therapist, or just any person, for you to make a decision based on what you feel? I often don't trust what I feel.

Good question. I think I sometimes feel a vibe from people with certain traits I want to avoid, particularly a professional. But it isn't easy to tell at the beginning of a therapeutic relationship necessarily. Personally, if they seem judgmental and labelling or very inconsistent (a therapist) I would run for the forest or cave.