How to Choose a Therapist or Counselor

If you’re short on time, feel free to only read the bold font.

If you type “therapists near me” into Google and hit enter (at least as of Jan. 30th 2023), over 3 billion results will pop up. If that isn’t already incredibly overwhelming enough, you’re then faced with the challenge of finding a good therapist. To make matters even more frustrating and difficult, you also need to find a good therapist who is specifically the right fit for you.

One of the Most Important Parts of Finding a Good Therapist

Choosing a therapist starts with your mindset or expectations. Let’s compare therapy to dating. When you’re dating, chances are slim that you expect the very first person you go out with to be your soulmate. You may not be thrilled with the dating process but there’s an understanding that you’ll have to go on some amount of dates (potentially more than you want or thought) in order to find the right match. Dating costs money, effort, and a lot of your time. However, when the right people date at the right time, magic happens (and I don’t just mean in the bedroom).

Therapy can be similar to dating in terms of process. It will cost you time, money, and a lot of effort to find a therapist. If there was a better and easier way to date and/or choose a therapist, I’d tell you, I promise. There’s no way around that reality but once you find a good therapist online or in person, the work you can do together has the potential to be incredible!

Something also worth noting is that the difficult and long process of finding a therapist isn’t dissimilar to the work you’ll do in therapy. Every single session won’t be hard (if they were no one would come to us). However, for most people, change is a slow, ongoing process. If it’s helpful, you can think of the search as part of the process/preparation for therapy instead of something that’s getting in your way of starting.

That’s Great and All But Seriously, How Do I Choose A Therapist or Counselor?

Feel free to make a list of the following:

1. Think about the demographics of the therapist you want to see. Do you want to see someone who is part of the LGBTQ+ community, part of the BIPOC community, older, younger, etc.?

2. Do you need to see someone who accepts your insurance? Are you willing and/or able to pay someone out of pocket?

3. Think about the setting (virtual or in person). Do you care if you ever see your therapist in person? Do you want to see them online but also still have the option to go in to their office every now and again?

4. What particular issues do you want to have addressed? Maybe you want to see someone who is more of a generalist. It’s also possible that if you’re, for example, having trouble with anxiety that you only want to see someone who is specifically trained to work with anxiety. If you’re having a problem as a couple, you might decide to see a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) who specifically works well with couples and advertises that (because in spite of having a MFT degree or MFT license, some therapists don’t work well with couples or flat out just won’t see couples).

5. What availability do you have? If your schedule isn’t terribly flexible, you’ll want to find someone who can see you during your limited availability. If your schedule is flexible, great, use that to your advantage! Flex your lunch breaks, have a session while the kids are napping, see your therapist in between classes, etc.

6. Is any of your previous list negotiable? It’s hard to find a therapist in general but it could become even more difficult once you’ve gotten incredibly specific in your desires and won’t budge. You might be thinking - Bri, why suggest making a list then? There’s a method to my madness - the previous exercise can serve as a helpful starting point for a process that feels overwhelming. Now that you have the list, it could be a great time to think about what your non-negotiables are compared to your nice-to-haves.

7. In a search engine, you can type in something like “anxiety therapist Los Angeles”. With Google, once you’ve hit enter and have gotten some results back, you can narrow them down further by using the “Hours” filter and/or the “Rating” filter. There will still be a lot of therapists to sort through but at least you’ve already weeded out the hundreds of professionals whose businesses aren’t open during the days and times you’re available along with those who don’t treat anxiety. You’ll want to refer back to that list you made earlier as you start clicking around on sites and/or calling. In this example, you’ve narrowed it down to therapists who see clients with anxiety in L.A. but maybe you still need to check to see if they accept insurance.

8. Check with your insurance. If you have insurance, often, they’ll have a list of mental health providers online.

9. You can give therapist directories a try. Some directories are: Therapy for Black Girls, The Embody Lab, and Therapy Den.

10. Ask your loved ones. If someone you know is in therapy or if you feel comfortable asking if they are, they might have someone they recommend.

11. Does your job have an employee assistance program (EAP)? If you’re not sure, check in with Human Resources. If they do have an EAP, chances are they’ll have a specific therapist they work with. One of the nice things is that EAP services are provided at a low cost. The downside is they do tend to be limited in the amount of sessions an employee can have.