How to Tell If Your Therapist is Any Good

 Susan Lwellyn has found that therapists are often out of sync with their clients around what they are doing in therapy that is useful. Clients find it most useful when they feel reassured and develop some strategies to solve their problems. Whereas therapists think they are being most useful when the client develops some insight into the cognitive and emotional causes of their problem. 

As a former therapist I know just how satisfying it feels to guide a client to an insight. I used to think "Now they understand how their current behaviour relates to their childhood experiences of emotional neglect, so they will now find it easy to change!" But, you know what, those long conversations didn't actually lead to a whole lot of change. I think they were based on a misunderstanding of what needs to happen in therapy.

William Miller (founder of an approach called Motivational Interviewing) discovered that some therapists do a much better job at helping their clients to change than others. Miller studied the differences between effective and ineffective therapists and found that the highly effective therapists:

• Were good at empathic listening and were genuinely interested in understanding the client’s perspective
• Coached the client to explore the pros and cons of change and helped them to make their own decision about whether they wanted to change
• When the client resisted the idea of change, the effective therapists ‘rolled with that resistance’ rather than arguing with the client.
• Had a respectful stance
• Honoring the client’s autonomy – the client gets to choose whether they change or not, and as adults, they take responsibility for the consequences of their choice.
• Viewing the client as the expert in their life. They didn’t talk down to the client but took a collaborative approach where they worked together to figure out what to do next.

So, here is my advice, if you want good therapy: 

• Look for a therapist who treats you and your perspective with respect
• Avoid therapists who argue with you; make you wrong or talk down to you
• Avoid therapists who want to spend hours working out how your parents/childhood messed you up
• Ask for the research evidence that supports the approach they are taking. 

How to be More Charismatic

Research suggests that charisma is determined by:

1. How expressive you are verbally and non-verbally
2. Whether people feel heard when they speak to you

When you are talking, what is the experience like for the listener? Are you open, animated, demonstrative and dynamic? Is there a degree of intensity and passion in your communication?  These characteristics capture people's attention and help them to connect with their own passion. Even something as simple as saying 'hello' to a friend can be 'charismatic' and demonstrate clearly how pleased you are to see them or be muted. That 'hello' may then set the tone for the interaction and, if it is the first time you have met, the rest of the relationship.

However, all that expressiveness wears pretty thin if people get the message that, in the end it is all about you. That you want all the limelight. Truly charismatic people also know when and how to give their attention to others. They listen intently. Their non-verbals show that they care about hearing your opinion and are moved by what you say.

So, if you aren't naturally expressive, would it be fake to adopt these characteristics?

I think, it depends on the reason you want to become more memorable and engaging. Does it align with some deeply held values? Perhaps you want to connect more deeply with the people you meet? Perhaps you want people to have a better experience when they interact with you?

When a change in behaviour is about becoming more like the person you want to be, then it might feel fake at first but over time it feels more and more like an expression of the 'real you'.