Find a Therapist You Can Trust

Trust is the foundation of all meaningful, healthy relationships in our lives, whether these relationships are formed with partners, friends, family members or colleagues. With trust, relationships develop and thrive, with each person learning from the other and growing from the experience. Without trust, relationships stagnate or wither, significantly reducing the potential for a positive outcome for either party.

It is our relationships and interactions with others that shape our social skills, world view and even our very existence, which gives a foundation of trust an even more pronounced importance when forming relationships of any type.

When you have made the decision to seek therapy with a specific goal in mind or as a step towards overall personal growth, it is essential that you find a therapist with whom you can build a trust-based therapeutic relationship. Trust is crucial to the therapeutic process and is a determining factor in setting the stage for successful, positive outcomes.

The success of a therapeutic alliance, which is the relationship between the therapist and the client, is defined by three factors: trust, rapport and collaboration. Each of these must be established to allow for constructive, productive therapy sessions and to ensure that you get what you want out of the therapeutic process.

Building rapport and trust may take time, but they are a vital part of creating a comfortable, secure environment where the client is able to talk and share personal information openly without the fear of being judged. It is through this process of building trust and rapport that collaboration is made possible, which will provide the groundwork for the therapist and client to become a cohesive team working together to set therapeutic goals and work to meet them. In this way, trust and rapport generally become more important in determining the outcome of therapy than specific therapeutic techniques or schools of thought, which highlights the importance of choosing a therapist with whom you feel comfortable and can build a positive alliance.

Working with a therapist can be a life-changing experience and is a commitment of your time, effort and money. The dynamics of the therapeutic relationship are paramount to achieving positive therapeutic outcomes; therefore, it is key that you find a therapist with whom you can build trust and rapport. Without trust between you and your therapist, the therapeutic process is severely limited, and the probability of achieving the positive therapeutic outcomes you hope for is greatly reduced. This, again, shows the critical role trust plays in the therapeutic alliance.