Knowing how to choose the psychologist who is going to assist you in psychotherapy sessions is very important. Not only do we have to make sure that he or she will be a professional in psychological assistance with sufficient training and qualifications, but we must also make sure that his or her areas of work and specialization are compatible with our needs. Throughout this article we will see several keys to choose a psychologist correctly, and what we should look at to evaluate each option.
Make sure you have an official qualification.
This seems obvious but it is not always so, sometimes certain professionals from other fields offer services similar to therapy without being trained or prepared to help us. It is important to make sure that the professional has a degree in psychology and a specific master’s degree in psychotherapy or clinical psychology.
Both degrees are necessary to practice and have the necessary knowledge to help us. Throughout his or her professional career, it is important that he or she has continued and updated his or her training. This is an indispensable requirement to know how to choose a good psychologist.
Look at your years of experience
There is a big difference between being in psychotherapy for a decade or having a two-year career. Value the knowledge that long professional careers provide, because psychology is not only learned in the classroom.
Look at their specialization
In psychological therapy there are many possible specializations; look for the professional profiles that best suit your problem or need.
For example, if you are looking for psychologists to treat your school-age child, make sure they are experts in child and adolescent psychotherapy, and not only in adult patients.
Maintain a good relationship with your psychologist
A fundamental part to know if we have known how to choose a good psychologist is to achieve changes in a psychological therapy and to reach our objectives is the therapeutic alliance.
A good psychologist not only needs knowledge, but must also know how to transmit it, try to understand us, be empathic, make us feel comfortable… We must feel that we are a team and that the therapy is a space of trust, safe and secure.
Only in this way can we be sincere, open up and embark on the path that will lead us to solve our problems. To choose a good psychologist it is essential that this bond exists, otherwise the therapy will lose effectiveness.
Inform yourself about the type of psychotherapeutic approach offered.
A psychologist may offer psychotherapeutic approaches that at the moment do not have solid evidence about their efficacy, such as past life therapy and other alternative therapies. This is not a reason to discard their services, but it is worth bearing in mind that certain practices are not supported by science.
Alternative therapies can be more or less useful depending on each case, since the usefulness or not is determined by the patient through his or her own subjectivity, but a good psychologist will not pass off one of these practices as a way of intervening with empirically proven efficacy.
Before choosing a psychologist, you should keep in mind that the form of psychological treatment that has the most scientific support is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, although there are treatments that have been shown to be effective in addressing specific disorders. That is why the best thing to do is to ask for information about the degree of scientifically proven efficacy of the treatments offered and, from that point, decide in one direction or another.