How To Choose a Therapist

Allison Peet on August 10, 2020

Billie Wade, writer

Finding the right therapist can seem daunting, and with good reason. When you entrust the essence of your life to another human being, you step into uncertainty and vulnerability. Making the decision and following through requires bravery and courage. Your perceptions about what therapists and counselors do, or previous experiences, may trigger intimidation, fear of judgment, hesitation about how friends and family members will perceive you and place expectations on you when you enter therapy, and a host of other fears. There are ways to ease the angst and enhance your search for the right therapist.

The therapeutic relationship is among the most powerful you may ever experience. Therapy/counseling is a reciprocal, synergistic relationship between two or more people in which the sole purpose is to promote the client(s) on their path of hope and healing from difficult emotional experiences. Therapy can be rewarding and empowering. It also can, at times, be perplexing, uncomfortable, exhausting, and frustrating. It helps open the channels of discovery that lead to insights and epiphanies. You may feel you are making little or no progress. Sometimes you are so close to your experience that your progress is not evident to you. Some issues require the peeling of many layers of emotional distress. Some concerns cannot be resolved or cured, only made less intense with focused attention to healing, a process rather than a destination. The process involves a constant exchange between you and the therapist. You both listen and interpret what the other is saying, or not, voice inflection, and body language, then reflect what is heard or seen, and share your assessment.

Therapy is a gift to me. It has been an integral part of my life since my mid-twenties. My experience with the gift of therapy includes my time as a client as well as seven years as an advanced certified substance abuse treatment counselor (ACADC). I believe in the power of talking through problems with someone who is trained to hear what I am not saying, read my body language, and reflect her or his assessment back to me, thus helping me sift through my feelings and reframe my experiences. For more information about the counseling process, see my article of July 2017, The Gift of Counseling. 

Depending on their areas of interest and training, therapists work under a license or certification or both. Psychologists. Social workers. Counselors. Clergy. Spiritual Directors. Most psychiatrists provide medication management and only minimal therapy. Many therapists are members of accountability and professional development organizations. Therapists may be trained in several treatment protocols and specialize in one or more. They also may have a client focus, e.g., men and boys; women and girls; families; children; teens; parents; LGBTQ+; retirees, and others. The therapists at Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center all have a diverse focus, recognizing how the complexities of life impact the whole client. No client walks in the door with only one issue, although a main issue may be the catalyst for seeking help.

Our list of therapists supporting adults

Our list of therapists supporting children and adolescents

Your role is to tell the therapist, as fully as possible, your story as you understand it. Honesty and openness strengthen the interactions. You may not always hear what you want or were expecting, and some reflection may be uncomfortable. Between sessions, you are responsible for working on any assignments, checking suggested resources, and reflecting on important points. You always know more than your therapist as you are living the experience and, therefore, have information the therapist does not have. Only you know your story and the reason(s) you are there. Your therapist cannot help you with what you do not tell her or him. The therapist knows, and therefore attempts to interpret, only what you reveal.

You and your therapist form a delicate bond of trust necessary to encourage honesty, exploration, challenge, guidance, and healing. The therapist’s role is to assess and interpret your words and body language and offer reflection, validation, compassion, empathy, support, encouragement, and direction. Despite the gravity of our discussions, my therapist and I always encounter something that triggers laughter or a smile—that is right, every session. While issues are usually serious, there can be room for joy and lightheartedness and celebration. This requires an ever-strengthening bond between therapist and client. With all these elements in place, the client advances along the path of healing through hard work and the gradual opening of the golden doors of trust. I praised my therapist for walking with me through difficult times to which he nodded toward me and said, “The one sitting in that chair is doing most of the work.”

Effective therapy requires an attentive, intuitive, well-educated, and experienced clinician and an honest, introspective, reflective, open, trusting client. Two other key components in effective mental health therapy is the therapist’s mental agility and adaptability. Every client is different, and every session is different. I commend therapists for their unconditional positive regard for their clients. While they are not mind readers, they must continually interpret the messages—verbal, subverbal, and nonverbal—of every client at every session.

When selecting a therapist, you need someone to whom you can entrust your story. All of it. Finding a compatible therapist is often a process of seek and find and seek and find and seek and find. I experienced a lot of therapists over the years who did not meet my needs. I did not know how to find a therapist. Friends or my primary care doctor referred me to certain therapists. For my last two therapists, particularly with the one I have at the Center, I conducted a methodical search which follows.

I sought out my therapist at the Center by visiting the website and reading the bios of each of the clinicians, paying attention to area of interest or expertise, treatment protocols used, area of study or license, and other facts about the person. The bio of my therapist seemed to jump out at me. I called the Center to set up an appointment and asked to be placed on his schedule. During my first session, I shared a little bit of my story and asked him questions. At the end of the session, he requested that I give him six sessions before making up my mind. That was seven and a half years ago. On April 9, 2020, we celebrated our 165th session. One of the surprises about my therapist, a mutual discovery that arose organically over several months, is his interest and expertise in working with Black people. Never had I been able to discuss race relations with a therapist. You may need only a few sessions or long-term as in my case. It takes as long as it takes and is totally dependent on the therapist’s and client’s perspective of the healing or progress made.

Here are some tips to find a therapist that meets your needs:

  • Consider your reason(s) for seeking therapy.
  • Think about your end-goal for therapy, although you may not be able to pinpoint the reason at first. Usually, the client’s initial goal is relief from distress.
  • What are your preferences in a therapist: race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, religious or spiritual background, age, treatment modalities, race relations? Other parameters may be important to you.
  • Write out what you want, then narrow the list to three to five most critical points for you.
  • Read the bios on the Center’s website for clinicians who specialize in adults; children, adolescents, and teens; or spiritual enrichment.
  • When you find a therapist whose bio most fits your criteria, fill out our online intake form.
  • Have a list of questions ready to ask at your first session, such as “What is your experience working with…?”. Take notes.
  • Pay attention to the answers to your questions and comment on points that impress you as well as on those for which you need clarification or further exploration.
  • What are the therapist’s mannerisms and voice inflections?
  • Be aware of your comfort level during the session.
  • Do not be afraid to tell a therapist your initial thoughts and even your decision if you know what it is. It is far better to decline a therapist than to enter a relationship with one you know will most likely be a poor fit. That said, there can be surprises as I discovered with my therapist that reveal themselves over time.
  • You may want to interview several therapists before making your decision. Try not to worry about offending a therapist if you think she or he is not a good fit. Therapy is for your benefit, not the therapist’s.
  • Try to relax.

The decision to seek mental health therapy is a significant step to improve your life. Choosing a therapist that closely matches your need is vital for your maximum therapeutic experience. A methodical, well-planned search can save hours of unproductive sessions and frustration and hundreds of dollars.

How you select a therapist and how you show up and participate in your healing can make the difference between a therapeutic relationship that empowers you on your healing path and one that leaves you feeling unheard. To schedule an appointment with a therapist at the Center, click here.

May your trek on your healing path be illuminating, fruitful, rewarding, and empowering.

For more of Billie’s Blogs, click HERE.

Health tip: Finding Hope after Trauma

Christine Dietz on October 9, 2018

Dr. Christine Dietz

Finding Hope after Trauma

by Christine Dietz, Ph.D., L.I.S.W.

Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center

(October 2018) Like Christine Blasey Ford, I have been mocked for speaking out about sexual assault. The year was 1970. My friend, Jeannette, and I were speaking to the monthly meeting of the Burlington County, New Jersey, Bar Association as part of an effort to develop a Rape Crisis Center in the area. All in attendance were men. Our presentation was scheduled after dinner, and we were asked to wait at the bar. The bartender assumed we were prostitutes. We did not understand that we were the evening’s entertainment until we began our presentation, and I was not prepared for the mockery and hostility with which we were met. I will always appreciate the elderly man who got up and walked out in disgust.

Unlike Dr. Ford, I have never personally experienced sexual assault or spousal abuse. But I have spent the last 48 years working to ensure that the voices of women like Dr. Ford will not be silenced. I worked for rape crisis programs in New Jersey and Iowa, wrote the first article in a social work journal about family dynamics of father daughter incest, offered training and psychotherapy for victims and perpetrators of domestic violence in New York State, and taught and developed curriculum in a social work program in Maine devoted to helping beginning social workers confront oppression, trauma and their own biases. I served on a statewide task force in Maine to bring awareness of trauma into every aspect of the mental health system. I wrote articles, and gave presentations. Throughout this time, I provided counseling services to male and female survivors, perpetrators and their families.

When the #MeToo movement appeared on the scene, I was concerned. We have been having this conversation for almost fifty years. Was anything changing? Could we really make a difference? But at the same time, I was hopeful. Another generation of women was speaking out, energizing allies and making the public aware of sexual harassment, assault and abuse. Perhaps our moment had come.

This past week was devastating, for me, my colleagues and my clients. Dr. Ford found the courage to speak truth to power, and was, as she had feared she would be, annihilated. She was condescended to, ignored, even mocked by the president. And yet, I have found it difficult to give up hope. She DID speak out, and many hundreds more found the courage to join her. The genie is out of the bottle, and it is hard to stuff it back in. Things are changing, and I have hope for the future.

What is the evidence for hope? According to a New York Times article[i], Fred Rogers reported that, when he was distressed about a disaster, his mother would comfort him with the words, “Look for the helpers.  You can always find people who are helping.” I know. I see them every day at my workplace, the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center, where 31 mental health professionals provide psychiatric, psychological and counseling services to numerous survivors of sexual violence and assault. In the past week, I offered counseling or spiritual direction to six women and one male survivor of sexual and physical violence, listened to a friend whose memories of her own sexual abuse were triggered by the hearing, and led a training session for mental health professionals on trauma sensitive care. This was a relatively slow week. My colleagues were just as busy as I was. Every day I am privileged to witness the heroic work survivors undertake to heal from violence and abuse. Like Dr. Ford, many of these survivors are dedicated to “giving back” and helping others heal in what Dr. Judith Herman calls a “survivor mission.”[ii] Women like Dr. Ford and the #MeToo movement have also inspired survivors to speak up about abuse many years after it happened – some into their 60s and beyond. They did not speak up before for fears of not being heard or believed at the time and they were right – but no longer!

The conversation about rape, sexual harassment, sexual assault and abuse of women is not over. Women who have been in this struggle for decades are being joined by millennials to hold those who abuse women accountable. More women than ever are running for office at every level, and they are energized. They will not be silenced. Despite the characterizations of some, this conversation is not about partisan politics, it is about human rights and human dignity.

I pray that it will not take another 50 years to make a scene such as the one we witnessed this past two weeks unthinkable. I pray that women and men will continue to struggle for a democratic vision in which ensuring physical and emotional safety, respect, a living wage, health care, education and civil rights for all is viewed as common human decency, not partisan politics.

If you or a loved one needs help to deal with memories of sexual and physical assault or abuse, help is available. For emergencies, please contact your local rape crisis shelter or domestic violence program or go to your nearest emergency room. For non-emergency counseling services, the mental health professionals at the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center would be happy to support you on your healing journey. You can call 515-274-4006 or complete an online intake form at https://dmpcc.org/.

[i]  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/learning/look-for-the-helpers.html

[ii] Judith Herman, 1992, Trauma and Recovery, NY: Basic Books.

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Christine Dietz is a licensed independent social worker, spiritual director and Reiki Master. She is the Center’s Director of Clinical Training. She received her M.S.W. from the University of Iowa and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is a graduate of the Lev Shomea Training Program for Spiritual Direction in the Jewish Tradition. Christine’s focus in counseling is on helping people reconnect to their innate wholeness and renew their sense of hope and possibility. She works with people experiencing anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma, life transitions, chronic illness, grief and loss, and relationship issues. She also offers individual and group spiritual direction to people from all faith traditions. She is a member of the National Association of Social Workers and Spiritual Directors International.

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For more health tips from the Center: www.dmpcc.org/healthtips

The gift of counseling

Terri Speirs on July 17, 2017

special to the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center, July 2017

By Billie Wade

Billie Wade

Counseling is a gift accessible to most people who want to explore and transform their lives. My experience with the gift of counseling spans several decades as a client as well as a seven-year stretch during which I sat in the counselor’s chair as a chemical dependency treatment counselor. I was a counselor in counseling, which is imperative. Counseling provides a safe place to explore my inner world and help me reframe the outer world. Counseling is a gift I receive on my journey of self-discovery. Counseling frees me to voice my deepest thoughts, confront my most pressing problems, and receive feedback, encouragement, guidance, support, and reflection.

The eldest of three children, I grew up in a turbulent home. At age thirteen, I wanted counseling, but my mother refused, thinking counseling was for “crazy” people. My family doctor prescribed “nerve pills.” Shortly after my fifteenth birthday, I experienced a miscarriage. I graduated from high school at age seventeen and married a year later. At the age of twenty-two, I attempted suicide. My husband ridiculed me. The medical staff in the emergency room told me not to do it again and sent me home. In my mid-twenties, my doctor diagnosed me with clinical depression. Thus, began my rounds with counseling and medication.

Counseling helps me detangle the tightly woven threads of confusion and shame that I’ve protected for years. Counseling helps me face the challenges as I confront the issues of my life. Counseling helps me gain clarity about the events of my life. I can see options as I learn to look at my life from a new vantage. Talking with someone I trust helps me see a problem as it is. Unless I share my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and opinions, they go unchecked. I think I am right and I may be wrong, very wrong. My counselor validates my process by encouraging me to explore my experiences and feelings.

Counseling has carried me through many difficulties. Family of origin. A difficult marriage, and divorce. The birth of my child. My return to school as an adult learner. A career change. Loss of two jobs. Loss of identity. Grad school. Forced retirement. The deaths of my parents, sister, and partner. I could not have walked those dark hallways alone. I’ve needed a nonjudgmental person who could see all of me, help me recognize patterns and blind spots, and cheer me on in my growth.

Counseling has helped me see other people differently as I bring my own life and behaviors into perspective. I more readily see that we all have something to offer each other. People I find abrasive or unpleasant may hold valuable lessons for me if I give them the opportunity. Likewise, I have wisdom and insight to share. I am now more prone to consider the difference between responsibility and fault.

I have learned to respect my needs. Despite societal messages to the contrary, seeking professional counseling takes courage. It takes courage to look in the mirror and accept that we need the guidance, support, and encouragement of another person. It takes courage to pick up the phone and stay on the line long enough to say, “I need to make an appointment.” It takes courage to show up the first time. It takes courage to lay one’s life in the lap of a stranger.

My journey led me to the door of Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center when the organization was on Ingersoll, then to Westown Parkway, and finally to the present location. Most recently, the Center has seen me through the past four years as I faced life-changing losses on several fronts.

I am grateful for the gifts of counseling and the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center. Peace to everyone.

Billie Wade is a gregarious introvert whose primary interests are writing, lifelong learning, personal development, and how we all are affected by life’s vagaries. Issues facing black people, women, the LGBTQ community, and aging adults are of particular concern to her. She enjoys open-hearted dialogue with diverse people. The opinions expressed here are her own.

Read more blog posts by Billie

When you can’t do it alone

Terri Speirs on April 17, 2017

Carol Bodensteiner is an award winning author, and a member of the 2017 Women Helping Women committee.

Special to The Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center

By Carol Bodensteiner

If you’re at all like me, you feel you should be able to handle what life throws your way. Sure we know we’re going to hit bumps in the road, but even when we go down, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, as the song goes, and start all over again.

My sense of how to handle life comes from my German and English heritage. From my mother’s side, I inherited the well known English traits of ‘stiff upper lip,’ and ‘keep calm and carry on.’ From my father’s side, I acquired the German ability to work hard and solve my own problems.

These traits served me well throughout my life. Successful career. Raising a son. Marriage – divorce – marriage. No challenge I couldn’t tackle. If I just put my head down and kept moving forward, all would be fine.

Until it wasn’t.

When my mother died in August 2007, it was a shock because she was healthy. Even though Mom was 91, her death seemed in the order of things. But when my sister died by suicide less than nine months later, I was knocked off balance. Within the following 18 months, two close cousins and my mother’s sister also passed away. Then my husband and I hit a rough spot in our marriage.

The magnitude of such significant losses in such a short time, as well as the threat to my marriage, shook the earth I stood on. Who was I without those people who raised and shaped me? How would I manage if my second marriage crumbled? I questioned everything and everyone, from my church, to the values I was raised with, to who I was and who I wanted to be.

Believe it or not, I thought I could still manage on my own. One foot in front of the other. Keep moving ahead. After all, what else can you do?

Except I wasn’t okay. When my husband lost his footing on a ladder and wound up in the emergency room with a broken ankle, I realized I was done. Life was ‘piling on,’ and I couldn’t take it anymore.

In a rare moment of open sharing, I unloaded my anxiety on a friend. She recommended the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center. Even though I’d known about the Center for years, counseling is never my first thought. It’s not the way I was raised.

Yet I had nothing left and I knew it. I made an appointment. Then another and another.

Soft spoken and caring, my counselor helped me walk through the present-day trials, even as she teased out relevant factors from my childhood, my relationship with my parents, and my first marriage that contributed to the pit I found myself in.

As a writer, I process things by writing about them. I approached the counseling sessions the same way. Notebook on my lap, pen in hand, I recorded thoughts and words to consider later.

It is difficult to hear, to think, to talk, to write when you’re crying, which is what I did throughout most sessions. I needed to let it all go, and my counselor let me. Without judgment. Mostly she asked questions, forcing me to examine my own self. Periodically she suggested ways to think about a point and possible ways to move forward.

Above all, she gave me an unbiased, non-judgmental perspective, which I desperately needed. Over time I arrived in a better place.

I am grateful to the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center for offering a safe haven with talented counselors to help me and others through the rough spots, those times when even the most independent of us, in spite of our training and will, can’t go it alone.

Carol Bodensteiner is a writer who finds inspiration in the places, people, culture and history of the Midwest. After a successful career in public relations consulting, she turned to creative writing. She blogs about writing, her prairie, gardening, and whatever in life interests her at the moment. She published a memoir Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl in 2008. She indie published her debut novel Go Away Home in 2014. Go Away Home was acquired by Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing and re-launched in 2015.

 

They told me I wasn’t alone – Elizabeth’s story

Terri Speirs on July 12, 2016

Elizabeth images

Depression does not make a distinction of rich or poor, man, woman or child, yet it can have the same tragic outcome: suicide. However depression is treatable and people can experience the fullness of life. As an example, we offer the story of one of our clients, Elizabeth. (Shared with permission. We’ve changed the name and identifying details to protect privacy.)

If you saw Elizabeth today, you would see a beaming mother of two little boys, embracing the joy and challenges of a growing family along with her husband. But it wasn’t always that way. Life was bleak for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has suffered anxiety and depression since she was a young girl, starting therapy in third grade. Her fears were so dark she didn’t know if she would succeed in school, enter the workforce or continue to live. Psychiatric medication helped curb her mental anguish yet after she married she faced an impossible choice: having children or maintaining health. Elizabeth imagined her life with prescription medication would hurt the baby, and her life without meds might end.

Elizabeth came to the Center during this time of grave discernment. She met with a licensed counselor and the Center’s psychiatry physician assistant (PA). They all worked together to create a treatment plan. Elizabeth learned that there are safe medication options, if she and her husband decided to start a family. They did, and Elizabeth’s clinical team walked with them every step of the way.

The children are now one and three years old. Elizabeth is a working mother and tends to her self-care. Elizabeth continues treatment with her psychiatry PA and speaks fondly of her: “She tells me ‘happy, healthy mommy means happy, healthy baby.’”

Elizabeth is one of more than 4,000 individuals assisted annually at the Center. Approximately 35 percent of our clinical clients utilize a sliding pay scale, thanks to generous donations.

“They told me I wasn’t alone,” said Elizabeth about her clinical team. “They said I wasn’t the only one who experiences this.”

What is Pastoral Counseling?

Terri Speirs on April 19, 2016

By Sara Miller

This is the first in a series of articles on pastoral counseling and spiritual direction. While this introductory article will explore the idea of “pastoral counseling,” the rest of the series will profile individual counselors and spiritual directors at the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center.

Pastoral counseling is not that different from other counseling or therapy. Counseling, including pastoral counseling, is a way of dealing with personal or relationship concerns, issues, or problems that a person encounters in their life. Adding the word pastoral to counseling adds a sense of openness to airing spiritual questions, and pastoral counselors may have a greater comfort level with dealing with those questions though all clinicians can be attuned to the spiritual. An important note to go with pastoral counseling is that there is openness to the spiritual questions being asked but the client has to ask the questions because the counselor will not automatically assume the client wants to talk about matters of faith.

Spiritual Direction can deal with the same questions that are brought to therapy, the difference is that the issues are looked at in a different light. Spiritual directors practice the art of deep listening, to be with the directee as they explore their relationship with God. There is not a real goal in mind other than to listen and find where God is working in the midst of the life of the directee. Directees come seeking a spiritual companion who will listen deeply and journey with them through the process of exploring their relationship with God.

The following counselors at the Center contributed to the writing of this article, and will be profiled in this series:

Christine Dietz, Ph.D., L.I.S.W, Diane McClanahan, M.Div., and Kathy Reardon, R.N., M.S., are all spiritual directors. Christine is also a licensed mental health clinician.

Ellery Duke, Ph.D., M.Div., is a licensed psychologist and pastoral counselor. He also serves as the executive director of the Center. Mark Minear, Ph.D. and Amy Spangler-Dunning, L.M.H.C, M.Div., are both clinicians at the Center who also have masters degrees from seminaries.

Andrea Severson, M.Div., intern mental health counselor, is completing her mental health counselor degree from Drake University with plans to pursue licensure. Kay Riley, M.A., is a co-director of Prairie Fire along with Kathy Reardon. Sarah McElhaney, L.M.F.T., is a licensed marriage, family therapist.

Sara Miller

Sara Miller

Sara Miller served as an intern with the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center January – March 2016, during her senior year at Simpson College.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy

Terri Speirs on November 30, 2015

 

giving tuesday facebook_abigail

to read Abigail’s story, click image

In our story about Abigail’s recovery from a head injury resulting from domestic violence, Abigail said her treatment included Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy. We’d like to explain more about this treatment approach.

EMDR is an evidence-based treatment proven to be effective for the resolution of Post Traumatic Stress.

EMDR was originally developed as a technique useful in in relieving the after-effects of military combat, sexual and physical violence, car accidents and natural disasters. Over the past 25 years, EMDR has continued to evolve as it is used by practitioners around the world.  EMDR Therapy is being found to be effective with a number of issues, including  phobias, addictions, depression, and phantom limb pain.

Unresolved disturbing life events are stored in the  brain with the original feelings and perceptions as when the event occurred. The 8 phase treatment process accesses the person’s innate healing capacity. One of the unique aspects  of EMDR Therapy is the use of eye movements or tapping. This increases a person’s  mindfulness as it jump-starts the brain’s information processing system.  The disturbing feelings and sensations are cleaned away, and the client comes to a new understanding of the event, with a new, adaptive view of themselves in present time.

Presently, of the 26 therapists on staff at Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center, 10 are trained and practicing EMDR therapy, and three are certified.

Watch this public service announcement about Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy.

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