How to find the “right” mental health therapist
Photo by 1 of the 7 complete strangers Johanna met at a hiking trail after unsuccessfully trying to hide from them in Agua dos Reis during the Music Festival in Rio de Janeiro Brasil… these strangers of course are now forever family.
Tune into your body’s wisdom
I think I heard the term “terapia” when I was 15 or so. I knew my oldest sister was studying to be a psychologist and that my mom had left her community psychology degree to take care of her daughters, but it never dawned on me that I would ever pursue a mental health related degree. As a teenager in the Midwest of the United States, I was, to put it nicely, not adapting well, to my new environment. I did not want to. I missed my country where I had the privilege to not have to explain my identity without being mocked with Pablo Escobar, violence or drugs. I missed my arepas con chocolate y queso derretido por dentro for breakfast. I missed my friends, my neighborhood, and my sister who was denied entry to the US.
Oh how I wish I would have listened to my mother when she recognized I needed a trusting adult and a safe space to process what I was going through. Instead it took many, many (did I say many?) years of maladaptive coping to understand there was a lot inside of me that needed to come out. My first attempts at finding a mental health therapist were interesting. I mean, how do you know what to look for in a therapist? I was an adult, and I had been working in Oakland, CA with severely traumatized elementary school children and their parents. In my years working with kids, they taught me that beyond credentials and techniques, they needed someone who looked like them, who could understand their cultural references and who could speak their language so they could open up and feel safe. These feelings resonated with me back then and I set out to search for someone who met that criteria.
Not surprisingly, it was harder than I thought. I remember having found a South American therapist through my insurance and was delighted! I left for my first psychotherapy appointment confident he would be the one only to discover I felt worse coming out of session than how I went in.what happened!? I guess that could be a whole other post; in fact, I could write extensively about each of the times I tried to find “the right psychotherapist.” For now, I want to focus on the day I knew I found the one. There was something in his voice that made me feel safe. Mind you, this guy had all the credentials possible and available. He was a person of color and in my experience this means the more credentials the more likely to be taken seriously in a very competitive and systematically disadvantaged system; however, (and with all the admiration he deserves for his hard work) none of his degrees impressed me. I just felt…safe. After a year of incredibly hard work we had to part ways because he had to prioritize his health after an unfortunate diagnosis.
So what did I do? I started the journey of finding a mental health therapist again and then another season of my life came where I knew I needed something different and began my search again and if I had to part ways with my current therapist, I would do the search over and over again. Therapy is not about fixing what is broken, it empowers me to exercise my agency, prioritize my health, and invest in a lifelong healing journey. In the words of *Maestra Carmela Ruiz De la Rosa: “The purpose of psychotherapy is for the person to recover the lost or alienated parts of their personality…Health is not only the absence of disease but the ability to reach a functioning that brings us a reasonable degree of happiness.” Instead of happiness, I would dare to say “a reasonable degree of” self-compassion, patience, contentment and gratefulness regardless of the chaos inside of us and surrounding us.
If you are looking for the “right mental health therapist” follow this journey: a series of charlas or conversations with folks who have sought, are seeking, or have given up on therapy. Listen to their success stories and their not-so-great therapeutic encounters. Learn, breathe and take courage. I am confident that the “right psychotherapist” IS out there, waiting for you!
- Johanna
*Article Gestal Psychotherapy: A Humanistic Therapy