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When it’s time to seek out a psychologist in Calgary, you need to make sure that the professional with whom you work fits your needs and personality well. How do you accomplish this? The best and most effective way is to do your research ahead of time and seek out a consultation with those who seem like they might be a good fit for you. When you begin your search, consider these factors to narrow down the field to find the psychologist who is the right match for you.
Building Rapport
First, you need to make sure that you feel comfortable with your psychologist and confident enough to share your innermost desires and fears. The therapy will not work effectively if you hold back relevant feelings and information or if you constantly doubt that you and your psychologist are on the same wavelength. The best way to determine whether a rapport exists is to take advantage of the opportunity to consult with the psychologist before engaging in a long-term clinical relationship with them. This gives you a chance to state your problems and define what you want to accomplish through psychotherapy. It also lets you go outside that box a bit, getting to know your psychologist as a person and sharing bits of you that can build a deeper bond.
Seeking Recommendations
Not every psychology/patient relationship forms from a place of consultation and rapport, however. Sometimes, you find a psychologist through a referral from another professional or via another person’s recommendation. Sometimes, you can look up information about a psychologist’s practice online, reading testimonials from previous patients that can help you get a feel for the person. Ultimately, the important thing when you get a referral is to make sure that you trust the person recommending the psychologist to you. If that individual’s opinion holds weight, be it in a professional or personal sense, then you can feel more at ease with taking the leap of faith necessary to meet with the psychologist.
Initial Sessions
After you enter a professional/patient relationship with your psychologist, the early sessions are a sort of feeling out period where you both get to know each other and begin to explore your problems in depth. These early sessions are necessary for building rapport. You don’t need to be overly concerned if you feel awkward around the psychologist at first—it takes time to get to fully trust somebody, especially when you are unloading some of your deeper and more intimate feelings in their direction. While the early sessions might feel a bit awkward, you should feel more at ease as your time with the psychologist continues. If things don’t start to get easier, you may need to seek another professional with whom you can develop a better bond.
Therapy Styles
There are many different schools of psychology out there, and different professionals work in different ways. You can often find out about a specific psychologist’s preferred methods by looking up their professional profile. Some of the clinical jargon may seem difficult to understand, so don’t be afraid to ask for a layperson’s breakdown of what it means. If you have had good results with a specific kind of therapy before, it’s a good idea to seek that out again. If you are new to psychology in general and one psychologist doesn’t work out for you, consider seeking another who provides a different approach. Not all approaches work equally well for everybody, so it is very important to find what fits your needs the best.Knowing When to Move On
It can be hard to figure out when a given psychologist is not working for you and when you need to give things more time. In general, you can use the length of time you have seen the professional to help draw the determination. If you’ve been seeing somebody for several sessions and still feel high anxiety when speaking to them, this psychologist might not be a good fit for you. On the other hand, if you see some progress in your issues or look forward to your therapy sessions, then that is a good sign that you have found a psychologist who is in fact right for you.
Psychology has the potential to help you a great deal, but only if you find a psychologist who works well with you. Use the advice presented above to help you determine whether your current psychologist fits what you need or if you should seek more help elsewhere.
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