我怎么选择治疗师？

这是治疗师在专业训练之外遇到的最难回答并且最专业的问题之一。对于正在考虑心理咨询的人来说，来自治疗专家或者相关机构，比如美国心理协会，提供的建议会得到足够强烈的回应。如果你在阅读这篇文章，你可能要做一个非常重要的决定，花点时间，将这篇短文读完：

推荐

有位推荐的治疗师是不错的开始，但即使这样，还是有点棘手。假设你面临膝盖的外科手术，并且正在考虑某位特别的膝盖外科手术医生。这位医生的手术成功率是广为人知的，理疗师和病人可以自由的谈论他是否创新的或者新式的。他对术后护理有多尽心，他和病人的关系怎样。心理治疗，相比之下，是完全私密的，绝大部分来访者并不希望其他任何人他们正在治疗。所以可靠的信息就更难获取了。所以，从来源上考虑，最好的推荐来自你信任的人。他们可以是事实上自己正和治疗师一起工作，或者他们自己是心理治疗这块领域的实践者。（这句话的关键词是“你信任的人”）

连接

如果你只能靠自己，没有推荐：你该找什么样的人呢？首要的原则是：你可以跟他连系的人。心理疗法的研究是困难的，并且经常是不确定的，但是一个强有力的发现持续显示：那些觉得心里治疗非常有帮助的来访者都说治愈中最重要的部分是和治疗师的关系。首要的，你需要找这样一个人，你感觉他懂你，和他在一起非常的舒适，一个温暖的人，容易交谈，你感觉他积极的为你工作。仅有治疗关系是不够的，但是在治疗中，它是一条河，其它的一切都在之上漂流。如果没有这种深度的连系，其它的一切，即使是洞察或者智慧，都是空词。

但是真正的心理治疗，并不是像带领拉拉队一样。它会是一个激烈的情绪过程。包括某个时刻，治疗师是生硬的，或者艰难的对你作出解释。还有这样的时刻，你感到被伤害或者对你的治疗师感到愤怒，误解或者更糟糕的，在治疗中感觉受到忽视或者贬低。你需要一个足够强大的关系去承载这一切，并且任何东西都可以开放的去讨论和解决。

训练

找一个人可以与之舒适的讨论，这不是买一个朋友吗？这是我那个持怀疑论的老爸（老妈\阿姨\好朋友。。。）说的。

不！你的治疗师是受过高度训练的个体，他的解释并非老生常谈，也不是鼓舞士气的话，而是经过沉思并且在合适的时间点说出，还有精微的干预。临床心理学工作者，在高校5到7年，受过大量的训练，比如人格，心理疗法，有督导的心理治疗。毕业前有至少一年以上的督导下的实习。毕业后至少两年的进一步督导下的工作。你的治疗师可能还会有一些更高级的训练。你可以自由的询问他/她的培训背景。

洞察力

你需要一个有能力提供你洞察力的咨询师，我的意思是：通过洞察，你会了解我们日常的生活经历尤其是我们的原生家庭如何塑造我们独有的经验自己和他人方式。许多被塑造的体验有其深度的模糊的根源，得回溯到我们的童年。经常是回到那样一个时刻，那时我们还缺乏语言来编码我们的经验。我们进行治疗就会知道过去被塑造的体验很多滞留在现在，在我们的意识之外。并且我们目前的生活，当下，存在替代某种行为方式，我们在感觉的状态。

在治疗中，我们会发现：我们如何使自己远离某种情绪，我们如何重复自我防御的人际关系;好的治疗师会帮助我们发现这些模式，看到他们早年的意义和功能。举个例子，我们发展出某种模式保护自己不至于表达一个像炸药一样随时爆发的父母，或者极端的反例，孤僻而寡言的父母。这种模式，曾经保护我们的，现在却掠走了我们潜在的快乐和满足。真正的觉察来之不易，在浓浓的治疗关系中，深层的情绪会被触及。

智慧

你也需要一个可以提供智慧的治疗师，其治疗性的存在源于他/她对自我深深的了解。我头脑中对智慧有特殊的含义.如果说洞察力是关于这个世界是如何塑造我们的，智慧却是相反，智慧是知道我们如何塑造我们的心灵世界。我们如何利用我们独特的童年经历包括悲剧及分娩的阵痛，达成我们内在的目的。也许是借家庭的难题逃避某些成长性的却令人恐惧的任务，包括攻击，表达，魄力，性，爱。之后我们是主动执行者，而不是被动受害者。这个过程比觉察更为痛苦。

智慧是上述过程的结果，智慧令我们痛苦的走向谦卑，宽恕和接纳。智慧的治疗师一般（但不一定）他们自己也完成了一个艰难的治疗过程。这意味着他们对治疗过程的承诺也有着深层的情感根源。有这个机会，他们也可以带领你穿越获得智慧的过程。我建议你找个治疗师，在所有的属性当中，智慧是最难判断它在还是不在的。你或许会瞥到智慧的影子，就像它就在一样。在你的感觉中，你的治疗师的力量并不源于那里“自然的”东西，比如，智力，温暖，也包括他们自己内在的挣扎，也许这些展示在他们自己的治疗理论中，也许在别处，，了解到他们自己的局限，并且试图超越他们。

灵活

你需要这样的治疗师，其带着不确定性和含糊性，并且与之相处是舒适的，这样他才有能力从他惯有的治疗模式中跳出来，了解到那些理论是否可以理解你。也许谦卑也攫取了这个重要的特质，这是对治疗理论深层知识及人依然需要臣服生活的不确定性和神秘的接纳。

好的治疗师，他们的思考是流动的，他们有能力在心灵的严肃与轻松之间快速滑动。所以他们是认真的但不古板，忙碌的却不超负荷。心灵上同样的灵活性也会展示，比如，通过对荒诞，幽默，反讽的鉴赏，当然如果不合适，它将不会再治疗中显露出来。

Thoughts on Choosing a Psychologist for Therapy  Dr. Howard Erman, PhD;

But how do I choose a therapist?

That is one of the hardest professional questions therapists encounter outside their practice. One therapist's answer has received a strong enough response that he offers it to anyone considering therapy, along with links to other relevant sites, including some from the American Psychological Association. If you are reading this page, you are about to make a very important decision; take the time to read this short essay to its end.

Recommendations.

Having a therapist recommended to you is a good place to start, but even this is tricky. Suppose you are facing knee surgery and are considering a particular knee surgeon. His operating room success rate will be widely known in the hospital, physical therapists and patients may talk freely about whether he is innovative or up-to-date, how aggressive he is in pursuing after-care, how he relates to his patients. Psychotherapy, by contrast, is completely confidential and most patients do not even want anyone to know they are in psychotherapy. Reliable information will be much harder to come by. So consider the source: the best recommendations come from people you trust who either themselves were actually in treatment with the therapist or else are themselves practitioners in the psychotherapy field, (and the key phrase in this sentence is “people you trust.”)

Connection

What if you are on your own, without a recommendation: what do you look for? This above all: someone you can relate to. Research in the area of psychotherapy is difficult to do and often inconclusive but one strong finding consistently emerges: patients who find psychotherapy helpful say the most important part of therapy is the relationship with the therapist. First and foremost you want to find someone you feel understands you and you feel comfortable with, a warm person, easy to talk to and whom you feel is actively engaged with you. The relationship alone is not enough, but in therapy it is the river on which everything else flows, and without this deep connection everything else, even insights or wisdom, will seem empty words.

But therapy, real therapy, is not cheerleading; it can be an intensely emotional process. This may include moments when the therapist has blunt or difficult comments for you. There is also a chance that you may feel hurt by or angry at your therapist, misunderstood or worse, feel slighted or demeaned in therapy. You want a relationship strong enough for this or anything to be open for discussion and resolution.

Training

Finding someone you are comfortable talking to—isn’t that just buying a friend? That’s what my skeptical dad (mother/aunt/best friend…) says.

No, your therapist should be a highly trained individual whose comments are not clichés or pep talks but thoughtfully timed and nuanced interventions. Clinical psychologists, for example, are in school from 5 to 7 years, take many courses in personality, therapy, take supervised practica in therapies, have at least a year of supervised internship before graduating and at least two years further supervised work post-graduation. Your therapist may have taken further advanced training. Feel free to ask about his or her training.

Insight

You want a therapist who is capable of offering you insight. By insight I mean an understanding of how our own particular way of experiencing others and ourself has been shaped by our life experiences generally and especially by our family of origin. Many of these shaping experiences have deep, dim roots, extending back to childhood, often back to a time when we lacked language to encode our experiences. We come to therapy knowing some of these shaping experiences but many remain present outside awareness, existing instead in patterns of actions or in feeling states we have in the present, in our current life.

In therapy we might discover, for example, how we distance our self from certain emotions or how we repeat self-defeating relationships; a good therapist should both help us discover the patterns and see their earlier meaning or function. For example, we might see that a pattern developed to protect our self from say an explosive parent or, to pick the extreme counter example, a withdrawn parent but this pattern, once protective, now only robs us of potential happiness or satisfaction. Real insight only emerges as a hard-won, deeply emotional achievement in the context of deeply engaged therapeutic relationship.

Wisdom

You also want a therapist who can offer wisdom, whose therapeutic presence emerges from a deep understanding of him or her self. I have a particular meaning of wisdom in mind. If insight is about understanding how the world shaped us, wisdom is the opposite, understanding how we shaped our psychic world, how we used our particular childhood including its tragedies and travails for our own internal purposes, perhaps using family difficulties to avoid certain developmentally frightening tasks involving aggression, say or assertiveness or sex or love. Since we are the actors here, and not just the victims, this process is even more painful than insight.

Wisdom is the result of this process and usually results in a painfully achieved humility, forgiveness and acceptance. Therapists with wisdom usually (though not necessarily) have themselves completed a difficult therapy process, meaning their commitment to the therapy process has deep emotional roots, with the chance that they may be able to bring you too through a process of achieving wisdom. Of all the attributes I suggest you seek in a therapist, this attribute, wisdom, is the hardest to even judge whether or not it is present. You may find the shadow of wisdom, as it were, in your sense that your therapist's strengths arise not only from what is “naturally” there, intelligence, perhaps or warmth, but also involved their own internal struggle, perhaps in their own therapy, perhaps elsewhere, to understand their own limitations and attempt to get past them.

Flexibility

You want a therapist who is comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, who is capable of stepping outside his usual patterns of therapeutic understanding if that is what it takes to understand you. Perhaps humility also captures this important characteristic, an acceptance that deep knowledge of therapy and people may still need to bow to the uncertainties and mysteries of a particular life.

Good therapists are fluid in their thinking; they ought to be able to move quickly in their mind between the serious and the light-hearted so they can be earnest without being stuffy and engaged without being over-bearing. This same flexibility of mind will often show up as an appreciation of the absurd, the humorous and the ironic, though these may not show up in a therapy where it may not be appropriate