How to understand when it is time to change a psychologist

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

a practicing psychologist and co-founder of Moscow Psychological Laboratory 12, talks about what the behavior and words of your psychologist should alert you and, possibly, make you think about changing the therapist.

Recently, more and more often my friends and clients share with me their negative experience of working with psychologists. Not always a person who is in a difficult life situation can himself assess how professionally a psychologist works, since in such circumstances the criticality is reduced, the boundaries are easy to break, the person becomes more vulnerable. Many people feel uncomfortable at the appointment, but do not dare to change the psychologist. Sometimes - simply because they do not know what is permissible and what is a gross violation of professional ethics.

I decided to make a memo - a list of what should at least alert you when communicating with a psychologist. And as a maximum - to push to change the specialist. If your psychologist doesn't say that and doesn't behave like that - super, hold on to him.

1. Requesting a personal service

For example, a therapist, having learned that a client is an excellent programmer, asks him to create a website. Either to introduce someone important, or to lend money - any request that involves using the client's resources for the therapist's personal gain is unprofessional, manipulative, and harmful to the therapy.

2. Dealing with personal matters during the consultation

During the consultation, the therapist suddenly decides to put himself in order ("You go on, go on, and I'll put on my makeup for now"), answers the phone call, reads a book (by the way, these are real cases). Remember that during the consultation, you are entitled to 100% of your therapist's attention.

3. Invitation to face-to-face communication outside of sessions

Drink coffee, go to the exhibition together, just walk and chat. Personal contact between client and therapist outside of the sessions is possible, but this means the end of the therapeutic relationship. And it's better if time passes between these events. That is, you will be able to be friends with the therapist in six months and it will be safe for your therapy.

4. Role reversal

If the therapist asks you for advice (“What would you do in my place?”) Or talks about his difficult situation not as an example, but with a request for support from a client.

5. Any specific advice in the client's choice situation

"You need to get divorced / marry / quit / move to your mom." This is unethical because it puts the client in a subordinate and dependent position. In this case, the therapist takes responsibility for the client's decisions. And the client may receive temporary relief, but he does not receive therapy and the opportunity to learn how to make these decisions on his own - for which he, most likely, came to therapy as well.

6. Accusations against the client

"You yourself are to blame for the way things have come about", "It's difficult to work with you, you resist, you don't want to change, you don't want to cooperate."

7. Depreciation in any form

"Your feelings are nonsense, that you are so worried about it, it can be worse."

8. Hints instead of direct communication

9. Hints of mental inadequacy

An exception is a direct question in a diagnostic interview about the presence of mental illness.