You’re allowed to decide a therapist isn’t a good fit for you and go for a new one. You should be aiming for a therapist you feel you can trust.

Therapy is mostly just awkward at first. It begins with learning to talk about how you’re feeling, and from there it’s largely just being gently nudged in different directions.

Results are often slow, but sometimes you have breakthroughs. Different types of therapy have different speeds though, and they’ll feel different too.

Personally my therapist doesn’t write much down specifically so that nothing can be subpoenaed. She told me that from the start. You’re allowed to ask about it and if they get mad you can thank them for their time and find someone else.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY68svEg1bAjO1evL2s2saTTi-69uhqFR

You should also know that certain diagnosis can be used against you. Example of pilots licensing with the FAA can be jeopardized with a depression diagnosis for instance. Which isn’t to say don’t be forth coming, just balance that against risks.

https://psychcentral.com/depression/faa-still-stigmatizes-depression-mental-illness

Do you start to see results right away, or are things slow at first?

It’s slow. Super slow. I have questioned the efficacy multiple times, but still after months of hard work on my part there was some progress. It was hard to see but there was some progress.

What’s it like? Is it warm and fuzzy, or cold and analytical?

It’s not warm. It’s not fuzzy. It’s not cold, and it’s not analytical.

There will be a lot of empathy, and just like medicine, that has a bitter taste, there will be pain, but it will be good for you. Best description I could provide is a scenerio where you need to perform a surgery on yourself but the best surgeons of the world have come up with a procedure to save you but they are on the phone. You can’t put yourself under anesthesia, but you have time to learn how to be a surgeon by practising on yourself.

The work happens entirely outside therapy. Therapy is just a method to give you another way of thinking about certain scenarios that you can apply in the future to get out of the train of thoughts that made you feel like going to therapy in the first place. So more akin of picking up a book from the library, you still have to read it yourself.

This is very boiled down, but ultimately what I feel about therapy. I’ve been in and out of therapy for half a decade and are only now seeing benefits from it, and that mostly is due to me having the wrong idea about what therapy provides.

Different therapy forms give different tools but if you aren’t on the hunt for a specific one you’ll likely end up with CBT which fits my description the most. In VERY tough terms, if you have a good listener in your close circles you can talk to about anything it’ll come close to what CBT offers.

You are never stuck with a particular therapist. Finding the right therapist for you is critical. If one isn’t working out, you need to switch. A good therapist will challenge you and provide specific things to work on outside of therapy. If they aren’t doing that, they aren’t a good therapist.

The first person you meet with might not be a match. Don’t get discouraged. You might have to meet multiple people. You’ll know when you feel ok with someone’s personality.

Multiple decades, geographies, and the retirement of a therapist as experience speaking.

Generally speaking, it’s a conversation with someone who’s capable of guiding you to better choices and responses. How “warm and cuddly” that is depends on the therapist. Trying different therapists until you find someone youre truly comfortable with is part of it all.

How quickly it “starts to work” is entirely dependent on a) How honest you are, b) how open you are to outside perspectives, and c) how much baggage you’ve got to unpack.

As an adult, you should be fully protected by doctor-patient confidentiality and HIPAA unless youre threatening yourself or others. There are very clear benchmarks for that, but ymmv depending on location. Im not from Ohio so 🤷‍♂️

If youre on the queer or autistic/adhd spectrums, try to find someone who specializes in that. They’ll know how to help you without putting you at risk.

And ALWAYS avoid free counselors. Theyre usually tied to religious charities and will steer you toward their perspectives, or put you at risk for being queer etc. Just stay away. It’s like any other trade, if theyre worth it, pay them.

You are over thinking it. Just go.

Don’t lie or give therapists any run-arounds. They’ll know and while they can’t like penalize you for it, they could smell the bullshit and may call you out on it.

You need to open yourself up a lot. Not immediately, but in time. Therapy is about coming to clarity about your issues. You may hear things you won’t like. You may hear things that may get you emotional. That’s part of the process. The sooner you come to those truths and face them, the better off you’ll be, because you’ll figure ways in how to handle them.

Talking about self-harm and abuse to others may force a therapist to commit you into emergency self-care. Meaning they’ll reach out to emergency services to have to come get you if they feel you’re a threat to yourself or others.

Have a clear objective and a clear goal for you and the therapist to work on.

Oh and personal advice, if you do video-chat or anything with audio. Do yourself a favor and grab the audacity audio software, then figure a way to record everything a therapist has said to you to listen to as many times as needed.

I have started and stopped therapy a zillion times before. People would always tell me “go to therapy”. It’s kind of insulting, honestly, as if it was some magic cure all way to dismiss me.

What I’ve found is that therapy doesn’t help if you don’t have a specific enough problem to work on!! So people would always tell me “go to therapy” and I couldn’t figure out wtf I was supposed to work on there so the therapists didn’t focus on anything helpful either.

BUT I feel like I’ve just finally discovered a specific thing I want to work on after years and years of this back and forth BS. So I researched a therapist that is said to use a specific therapy modality to treat my specific problem. We’ll see how it goes with her.

ALSO…it has been frustrating to me, but I’ve found that most therapists I’ve come across are just simply “talk therapists”. There is no real goal other than giving you validation and some general advice and vague concepts and techniques. This can be great for people…but for me it just hasn’t been helpful enough. It just doesn’t give me solid enough direction. But maybe a talk therapist is what you need…who knows?

I realize these don’t answer your questions directly, but I figured I’d share what I learned to hope if might help you. Best of luck.

Different therapists may treat you differently. They should be very receptive to your needs on that. Ask them to treat you how you want. It’s important that you feel they’re being honest with you.

Result time depends on you. For example you may partly need validation that you are in fact, doing something about your problems and that thought can kick start it. Some things come in the first week. But you’ll also hit the limit of plasticity in the brain where some things are just going to take 6 weeks or several months of dedicated effort to see results.

First of all, different titles (e.g. psychologist, psychotherapist, social worker, counsellor, etc.) require different levels/types of education and experience and you should be able to look up whether they’re in good standing with your state/provincial/federally regulated organizations. So you can look up how long they’ve been practicing, and what qualifications they have.

Second of all, it’s common to try several before you find someone that’s a good fit. It might take a few sessions before you decide whether it’s a match.

Thirdly, be wary of anyone that seems to be asking leading questions or giving you advice on what to do. A good therapist will help you build the skills you need to come to your own decisions. No one knows your life better than you do and it’s their job to pass along the appropriate interpretation of their training on to you. They aren’t there to pass judgement on you, your life, or the people/relationships in your life.

Lastly, I wish you all the best. It took me a long time to find my current therapist and it’s been life changing. I learned a lot along the way, and I hope your journey brings you what you need.

Random thoughts in no order.

I started therapy way late in life. I wasn’t against bit in general, I just thought I was too stubborn and private to get anything out of it. Good for you starting earlier than I did.

It started out awkward but I realized this was up to me if i wanted to get any thing out of it. This person went through a lot of trouble to be in a position to help me and I could either just trust that, or I should stop wasting her time and my money.

I got lucky and found someone I could connect to on my first try. My wife had to go through a few till she got someone she felt good about. Don’t feel bad if you dont find a connection with the first few you go to. This is important enough to get right. Do a session or two till you find someone you can be open and honest with.

The one I ended up seeing for a few years was significantly younger than me but we had a couple of big things in common so it worked really well.

Its like seeing a doctor, be honest. They cant help you if you don’t tell them what’s wrong. Doctors and therapists you tell everything to, cops you say nothing to. Everyone else is a case by case thing.

I can only speak from my experience but sessions were just talking and having conversation about what was going on in my head and life. Sometimes she’d suggest a book or something, but mostly she’s ask a few questions and let me work out what was up. Like, she knew the questions to ask to get me thinking about untangling my knots. It wasn’t her making notes about my problems and giving me solutions. Though she did have a few exercises to suggest I do that helped as well.

Once I let my ego or whatever go and started being honest with her and myself, I started feeling better pretty quick. Thats not to say my problems were solved or I had shit figured out, just that I felt like I was actually doing something about it. And that felt good. Like there was a better way to do things if I put in the work to relearn some habits and understand why I did things one way instead of another.

Good luck with this.

Everything @[email protected] said. For me I used a website to book 6 consultations with different therapists (15 minutes each) to figure out who I like that could work with my insurance, too. Having quick chats helped me figure out who was good for me and I’ve been seeing them ever since.