Advice on finding the right councilor/therapist/pyschologist ?

[Curiousity]

For one reason or another, I was seeing a therapist several years ago. During the course of our discussions, something interesting came up. My intellectual and emotional maturity are not in balance. I think that I had equated emotional maturity with just not losing your temper.

I've always been interesting in personal growth ever since I was a small child. I had the feeling that truly knowing yourself was very important. Somewhere along the line, my emotional maturity fell behind because I would quickly rationalize the feeling without allowing myself to endure / enjoy the feeling. That's what Bob (the therapist) thought and it seems right. He would catch me during talks and ask me stop and feel instead of immediately rationalizing the feelings.

Bob told me an interesting personal story. When he was first in the field, his professional was known as counselors, not therapists. People would see counselors all the time for personal development. He noted, with the sadness of a man seeing changes he did not like, that people today only see therapist when something is broken... something is wrong with them that needs to be fixed. Perhaps very similar to it taking people developing type II diabetes to start getting into shape. I suppose this might be wider spread and have some profound meaning on the direction that our society is taking at the moment. I don't know. Seems to me that most of the time, the past is just as good or bad as the present and it is one's perception and memories that color the commentary. Whoa... almost started rambling there.

My life has been very unstable for a couple of years. Nothing quite like turning your life upside down and shaking it a couple dozen time to find out what is important to you, eh? Anyway, partially due to conscious effort, things are slowing down and stabilizing for me. I think back to Bob and wish to continue my journey of self-development and balancing myself. When I left, bob mentioned that if I would like to continue, I should see a counselor that specializes in "balance." He mentioned that he was a little out of the loop, but last time he was in the loop, they practiced a Gestalt style. If I remember my schooling, it's the german word for "the whole is bigger than the sum of it's parts." ?? - maybe...

My point? I was curious if the professionals here could give me some advice to find the type of counselor / psychologist that I'm looking for. Thanks in advance.

 

[lilkoreangirl]

...

My advice is to go through as many counselling forum posts as possible and look at the responses from the resident psychologists and counselors. See who's chemistry seems to be the most effective for your personality and heart. An extra 2 cents? OuchThatHurts seems like a really decent guy.

Good luck,

LKG

 

[overman]

just don't forget

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Emotions are appraisals of situations, often times useful/effective appraisals. There is a logic or rationale behind the appraisal too. The real test is whether or not the emotion (appraisal) is an accurate response that conveys our needs. Trust your emotions. Your mind is already processing information that may or may not lie outside of awareness and is possibly making a decision, independently of you.

If you feel detached or "intellectualize" everything, take a moment and think about how you felt during a particular situation. Did you feel hurt? Angry? Ashamed? Excited? Proud? Generally, there is an underlying emotion that accompanies our thoughts and behavior. Sense it. Feel it. Experience it.

Oh yeah, Gestalt is a unique approach that requires a highly trained individual.

 

[Curiousity]

There are some wonderful responses above.

Finding someone who idea of success is the same as mine stands out. I've has girlfriends in the past whose idea of a successful life was different and watched the relationship fail (should have listened to you BigA .)

As for feelings, my main concern is when I react to a situation emotionally without thinking. I have no problem with having the emotions as they are part of life (and a good one too.) But I am wary of this emotional reaction.

If I am understanding OuchThatHurts correctly, he also hit on another concern of mine. Your emotions affected your perception and how you react to situations. I think we all have had a day that we've been angry most of the day and things that wouldn't have affected us in the least now become huge.

Bed calls...