What Makes a Good Therapist?

What Does a Person Need in Order to Be a Good Therapist? What Would You Look for in Your Therapist?

After more than twenty years of experience as a therapist, accompanying women and couples through life processes—pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, parenting, and relationships—I have felt the need to put into words what I see as the essence of a good therapist. In other words, what are the conditions that need to exist within a therapist in order to make good and genuine therapy possible?

(The focus here is on the layer beyond pure professionalism—the knowledge, experience, and specific skills required in each field—which are, of course, essential in their own right.)

When you go to choose a therapist, what is worth looking for? What is it your right to expect within therapy?

First, the therapist’s ability to be, at every moment, both inside the therapy, the situation, the process—offering genuine human presence and empathy—and at the same time to maintain an objective, fresh, and unburdened perspective. A capacity for holding two points of view simultaneously.

There should be an ability to see the situation clearly, to assess it thoughtfully and professionally. This is an invaluable tool.

The therapist must strive, with all their strength and at every moment, to experience and believe in the other person—to place their own ego, personal experiences, needs, fears, and desires in their proper place, and to remain attentive to the person before them. The therapist must be willing and able to face their own limitations and boundaries in order to see, as fully and clearly as possible, the human being in front of them. This may sound simple and self-evident, but that is not the reality one often encounters in therapeutic practice.

The ability and willingness to see the other is not only an obligation; it is the therapist’s primary tool.

Humility, humility, humility.

Despite all the knowledge, experience, skill, and intuition that are built upon them, the therapist must remain humble—to know with certainty that, at any moment, there may be something they still need to learn, that they do not know everything. The therapist must aspire to the capacity to remain in the space of the question, to hold that space, both for themselves and for the other.

And from that place, to ask, to be present, and to offer care.

And after every therapeutic encounter (especially one that was challenging, demanding, and perhaps frustrating, but also after sessions that were “good” and moving), the therapist must make time for themselves in order to process the experience and the learning, to weave together again their therapeutic fabric, and to gather strength and joy for the next person.

If they do not do this, their ability to remain a good therapist over time will be impaired.

What is a good therapist?

I would be glad to be in conversation with both therapists and clients about this subject.

Thank you,

Lilach