Best Therapists New York: Finding the Right Fit

What an undertaking this will be. What could the “best therapist” or even a “good therapist” possibly mean? This post will try to answer that question and offer support for anyone looking for the right fit in therapy. 

At our practice, we constantly hear from clients that they are coming from prior experiences with therapy that hurt them. We pride ourselves on supporting clients through experiencing therapy in a hopefully different light and offer a “corrective emotional experience,” as Franz Alexander and Thomas French put it in 1946 and still is a tenant of good therapists today. 

Unfortunately and fortunately, there are as many varieties of therapists as there are of humans. Damn. That one is tough to swallow. How in the world are you supposed to find the right fit? 

What We Want From Therapy (Broadly Speaking)

You’re struggling with some aspect of your life, you’re vulnerable, and you want someone to understand you and maybe even fix things for you. Let’s dispel a myth first: no therapist, no matter what they say, is capable of fixing you. For one thing, you’re not broken. I don’t care what your parent said, your partner said, your kindergarten teacher said, or the way your dog looks at you. Let me say it again: you. are. not. broken. 

Okay, now that we got that clear (you don’t have to believe me yet), therapists cannot fix you no matter what they say. Sometimes you’ll come across people that claim to be all-knowing gurus, but I’m sorry, no such thing exists and in my personal and professional opinion, you should be wary of those folks.

Good therapists, broadly speaking, will be there to listen and hold space for anything that you need to bring to the table. They will offer support, challenge you with a sense of care, hold firm (but supportive) boundaries, and show up week after week for you (with some time for their vacations).

What to Look for in a Therapist

Now that we’ve established what therapists are capable of and set a frame for what a good therapist looks like, let’s take a look at some things that you can consider. 

Gender (Binaries First)

Gender is among the first considerations for clients when choosing a therapist. You may not mind in any case, but you also may feel that your presenting issues are best shared with a certain gender. Counseling is a fairly female dominated field, but our practice has several male clinicians that are able to see you. Many women prefer to see female clinicians and many men prefer male clinicians, however, it may be an important challenge for you to get to see things from an alternate perspective. You may think that a male clinician will “just get it” when it comes to particular men’s issues, but that also may not be true and it could be in your best interest to test out that theory, if you’re up for it.

Age

Age may also be something of importance to you. Some clients look for therapists who are roughly about the same age as them, with a belief that there will be certain shared understandings. Other clients may intentionally want someone older than them, as there are mother/father figure transferential dynamics that could be clinically helpful to play out. It’s unlikely that your therapist will divulge their exact age, even if you ask, but you could probably get a decent idea from their photos. 

Key Demographics

The primary demographics that people tend to look for in a therapist are race and sexual/gender orientation, but there are others such as language, culture, or preexisting awareness of something important to you. If you’re a non-native English speaker and are able to find a therapist whom you can converse with in your native language, studies have shown this has the best therapeutic outcomes and is twice as effective than therapy in English if that’s your second language (Smith Bailey, 2007).

You may also feel safer speaking to someone of a similar race or from the LGBTQIA+ community. Therapists are typically happy to oblige this sense of safety-building from the onset. However, similar to the consideration of gender, you may think that your therapist of a certain demographic allows a sense of better understanding you, but that may not necessarily be true. A culturally competent counselor would be able to work with many different backgrounds, even if they don’t have preexisting knowledge of something specific. As we’ve noted, there are many counselors out there and someone may have said something really messed up to you. Stretching outside of your community is only something to consider, but you need to do what’s best for you.

Specialities

You might be aware of some therapeutic modalities and be interested in working with someone who has prior training in one of these. Some immediate ones that come to mind are CBT, DBT, IFS or EMDR. (This field loves acronyms.) There are so many valid reasons to want to work with a specifically trained therapist, but if the person you meet with doesn’t have formal training in any of these areas, they still may be a good fit for you. I recommend exploring why that specialty is important to you. We all come from different variations of the same thing, so even if your therapist doesn’t have that particular training, they may know exactly what you’re talking about.

Personality

You can gauge a sense of your potential therapist’s personality and demeanor through a consultation call or through your intake appointment. While therapists are not known for (really we’ve been precisely trained not to) showing too much of our personalities, you can still get a sense of who someone is with how you feel when talking to that person. The therapy space is about you, so we won’t be spending much time, if any at all, talking about ourselves, but personality will still shine through, since we’re human, too.

How To Know if it’s a Good Fit

Now you have your therapist and you’ve met with them a couple of times. Maybe you’ve decided to stretch outside of your initial desire to see a certain demographic of therapist, maybe you’ve gotten exactly the type of person that you were hoping to. So how do you determine if this is right for you?

Your internal state is an important guide here. How do you feel around this therapist? Do you feel like you have the space that you need to process something, or are they doing too much talking? Do you feel a sense of calmness in the room with them or a tension that you can’t quite explain? 

The best way to navigate the relationship once you’ve thought about the potential answers to these questions is to talk to your therapist about it, especially if you’re unsure. The ultimate test of whether or not they’re a good fit is how they respond when you tell them something to the effect of “I feel uncomfortable talking about xyz” or “I don’t like when you said/did xyz.” Can they hold space for your discomfort, for your feedback? Or will they respond defensively, argumentatively or otherwise harshly? How you feel once you’ve gotten through the first hurdle in the relationship is a major indicator of whether this is right for you.

That doesn’t mean that therapy isn’t right for you, but maybe you want to contact the group practice email, or return to PsychologyToday or Zocdoc and see if someone is a better fit. That doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with you and doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong with the therapist either (though there might be). It just means that they weren’t a good personality or style match for you. 

Conclusion

There are a lot of things to consider when thinking about the best therapist fit for you. The initial steps of the therapy journey can be daunting, but the reward is a sacred relationship with a trusted figure that will set you on the path to achieving your goals. You may be in a vulnerable place right now, but we are here to make things as easy as we can for you.

If the first person you meet with isn’t ideal, you can always let us know and we can set you up with someone who is a better fit for you. Even though there are as many variations as therapists as there are humans, that means that there is absolutely the right fit for you just a few clicks away.

If you’d like to meet with any of the therapists at our practice, you can check out our bios here, contact us or make an appointment below. We look forward to working with you!

References

Bray, Bethany. “Multicultural Encounters.” Www.counseling.org, Nov. 2019, www.counseling.org/publications/counseling-today-magazine/article-archive/article/legacy/multicultural-encounters.

Frances, Allen. “Corrective Emotional Experience Is the Key to Therapeutic Effectiveness.” Www.psychotherapy.net, 15 Mar. 2022, www.psychotherapy.net/blog/title/corrective-emotional-experience-is-the-key-to-therapeutic-effectiveness.

Smith Bailey, D. “Therapy Is Twice as Effective in Clients’ Native Language.” https://Www.apa.org, vol. 38, no. 2, Feb. 2007, p. 17, www.apa.org/monitor/feb07/therapy.