You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan wrestles with one of the most common questions we receive at the Allender Center.

What should I look for when I'm picking a therapist?

Dan offers several categories for us to consider as we seek someone to join us in the deep places of heartache and hope in our stories.

A friend of mine recently asked, how do you pick a therapist?

He was in the middle of some significant struggles in his life, his marriage,

a bit of his own sense of, what am I doing?

A gentleman probably in his early 50s, it would be trite to say a late midlife crisis,

but nonetheless a number of issues had congealed.

And he was in that point of asking, how do you go about picking someone to work with?

Indeed, what he was asking was far more,

who would I, in his geographical area, make a recommendation?

And perhaps that's one of the best ways to answer the question.

How do you find a good therapist?

Mostly, we'll get to this in a second

podcast, but mostly through the power of word, the power of recommendation. But before we get to,

how do you actually go about finding a good therapist practically? I really want to address what makes a good therapist and who

should you be looking for to be able to work with. And to begin this conversation, I think

it's just so important to say no therapists, no matter how good they are, what theoretical orientation they have,

whether a believer or not, whether they're experienced, or how long they've been experienced,

or what areas of specialty that you need, and they work in beyond all of those practical issues.

The first comment that needs to be made is,

...