Questions to ask a therapist before you start

You would ask a surgeon what they had done before. Therapy attracts a peculiar deference that discourages the same questions, partly because people arrive feeling vulnerable and partly because the field does a poor job of inviting scrutiny.

Ask anyway. Below are the questions I would want asked, roughly in order of usefulness.

About their training

1. 01What is your qualification, and from which university? Look for a specific degree and a named institution, offered without hesitation.
2. 02Are you in regular clinical supervision? Good practitioners are, at every career stage. A no is a meaningful answer.
3. 03Have you worked with this kind of difficulty before? Not a demand for a specialist, just a check that you are not the first.

About how they work

1. 01What does a session actually look like? You are listening for something concrete rather than a description of warmth.
2. 02What approach do you use, and why for my situation? A good answer connects the method to your problem instead of reciting acronyms.
3. 03How much of this happens between sessions? Some approaches are homework-heavy. Worth knowing whether that suits you.
4. 04How will we know whether this is helping? A practitioner who has thought about how progress gets measured is a good sign.

About the practicalities

1. 01What is the fee, and is the session 45 or 60 minutes?
2. 02What is the cancellation policy?
3. 03How often would you suggest meeting, and for roughly how long?
4. 04What are the limits of confidentiality? Every honest practitioner has some. One who claims none has not thought it through.
5. 05What happens if I need to stop, or want to change therapist? Listen for ease rather than defensiveness.

The question people never ask

"Is there any reason you might not be the right person for this?"

The best answers I have heard to this are specific and slightly against the practitioner’s own interest: that they would want a psychiatrist involved, that trauma of a particular kind is not their area, that someone who works in a different modality might get there faster. That kind of candour is the strongest signal you will get on a first call.

What to notice beyond the answers

• —Do they listen, or wait to speak?
• —Did they ask what you want, or assume?
• —Do you feel evaluated or received?
• —Did they oversell? Anyone promising to fix this in four sessions is guessing.
• —Can you imagine telling this person something embarrassing? That one matters more than all the rest.

If the answers were fine but the feeling was off, take the feeling seriously. Is my therapist right for me goes further into judging fit once you have started.