How to Choose a Therapist In a Country Where Mental Illness Is Stigmatized

Finally dragging your ass to therapy may seem daunting as hell, but the good news here is that it's not even the worst part of the process. The worst part of it all is that even once you make it to therapy you might fail anyway. It's easy to fall into the trap where you start to believe that just making an appointment with a therapist is a step toward recovery. But the truth is finding the right therapist, much like dating, can take time.

A therapy session that don’t help you improve can actually hurt. It might feel like a waste of time, energy, and money. Think about it this way, you're already feeling bad, then you add in the financial stress of paying all that money to end up no better than before you started. It's easy in situations like this to think "If I wanted to feel bad, I could've just saved the money and stayed in my room all day long."

Then even after you do all the research about which therapist to see—Man or woman? The one you want or the one you can afford?—you can still feel super nervous before the first appointment. What if, after all that work, this therapist still isn't "The One"?

It's important to realize that no good therapist is there to tell you want to do. The whole point of therapy is to figure out how to be a better version of yourself.

"The goal of therapy is so that the client can understand themselves more, realize the source of their problems, and the resources they have in order to solve their problems," Agatha Novi Ardhiati, a psychologist at Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya, told me. "It’s important to note that psychologists are only there to help their clients make their own decisions."

Some people don't realize what therapy actually is when they decide to seek help. So if you think a therapist is going to solve all your problems for you, then you're probably going to walk away feeling unsatisfied with the whole process.

"When the client understands the problem, and can handle it well, carry on their daily lives as normal, it means that the therapy is successful," Agatha told me.

For a lot of people, it might take a few sessions to decide if your therapist is right for you. For others, it might take even more time. It personally took me a whole year until I finally decided that the therapist I was seeing wasn't the right one for me.

The first mental health practitioner I ever saw was a psychiatrist. I walked into a clinic and went straight to the receptionist, asking to see anyone who was available, as long as it was a woman. On top of being too scared of the idea of talking to a male therapist, I believed that a woman would understand my concerns better. I realized later that this wasn't not necessarily true. My first few sessions with her were a relief. I wanted to share my darkest thoughts with somebody I trusted. But after a while, I realized that I needed something more. That's when she prescribed me some medication. While the meds helped me improve, I also grew uncomfortable sharing some things with my psychiatrist. She started blurting out judgmental remarks when I told her certain things. She also kept suggesting marriage as a solution to my problems, reducing my change of physical appearance into self-esteem issues, and constantly commenting that I looked better with my natural hair color. At one point it felt like she was trying to mold my personality into what she thought a good person ought to be. Because I was afraid she was going to judge me even further, I only told her the bare minimum in our sessions, which must have led to a delayed progress in my mental heath.

When the realization hit me, I felt betrayed. My world was in shambles, and because I couldn’t tell my mother about it, I went out of my way to find comfort from this person who, in the end, turned out to be A LOT like my mother, only with an actual license to tell me what to do.

To deal with this problem, I decided to see a psychologist at the same time—and she was amazing. (FYI: In case there's some confusion here, a psychologist is a therapist, as in they talk to you and listen to find a solution to your mental health problems. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who an prescribe pills to address mental health issues like depression.)

My psychologist was a lot younger than my psychiatrist, and most importantly super open-minded and accepting. She helped me to confront my problems on my own without attacking me. I felt like I could trust her, and she made me feel like I could rely on myself. I had to stop seeing her because she was out of my budget at the time, but thankfully the sessions I went to had helped me gain enough self-independence to feel like I didn’t need to go to her all the time.

I decided to ask around to find out about other people’s experiences. Unggul*, a friend, said that his current therapist works so well for him because she is willing to listen and she isn’t preachy. She suggests ways to deal with his problems that work with his personality. Unggul’s therapist wants him to accept himself before changing what he doesn’t like about himself, he told me.

“I’m also willing to listen to her, because I know there’s something wrong and want to fix it,” he said. “It’s more like a collaborative effort.”

Of course you’re not spending your hard-earned cash just to get someone to agree with you all the time. Disagreements and arguments aren't always a sign of bad therapy. Another friend, Nina*, argues with her current therapist plenty—but she says that it's a good thing. “She challenges my ideas so that I can tell which ones I really believe in, and which ones I’m still not sure about,” she told me.

Nina thinks that her current therapist has a better way in communicating her assessments and asks better questions compared to her old one. Her therapist doesn’t oversimplify her problems, and it makes her feel more understood. “She confirms that my problems are real, and it's a nice feeling.” Unfortunately, there’s really no definitive answer to what a good therapist is, but the best tip I can give you is to trust your gut. It’s important to be patient and follow through with the process, but also acknowledge your own feelings during therapy. Sometimes when you’re seeking help from a professional, it’s hard to remember that they’re human too. Their advice doesn’t always work, and, in the end, it’s you who decides where to go with the treatment.

Also, everything really comes down to how comfortable you feel around them and how you think you’re progressing under their watch. The most important thing to remember though, is to look at mental health practitioners not as healers, but as people who assist you through your recovery.

*Neither of these are their real names. While both of them were able to overcome the taboo of seeking help for your mental health, neither were comfortable publicly telling everyone that they see a therapist because of the same societal taboos.

Rock Bottom is VICE Indonesia's on-going column on mental health, depression, and how to deal with it all in a country where frank discussions of mental illness are still pretty taboo.