In the introduction to this series we noted the difficulty of getting adequate relationship advice from friends, family, and even counselors who often do not know what constitutes a healthy and strong relationship. The problem, as we noted, is as much individual as it is societal. Our modern western cultures have staggeringly high relationship failure rates so it is not surprising that the majority of individuals cannot provide adequate relationship advice.  This puts people who want to work on developing a solid relationship in a quandary. What do you do and who do you turn to for advice and guidance?

In this article we are going to provide some guidance on the sorts of things you should look for in your relationship counselor. We’ll examine the red flags that may warn you that this person or that individual and offer guidance on the types of questions you should seek answers to. Keep in mind as you go through these that these are just examples. They are not meant to be definitive but only suggestive. Use your brain and approach the counseling relationship in a critical fashion and remember, just because somebody has an MA or a PhD does not mean they are necessarily qualified to offer advice on affairs of the heart. Many individuals with advanced university degrees end up in unloving, pathological, abusive, sexist, and broken marriages and you need to know when this is the case so that you can judge for yourself whether you want to seek advice.

Questions to ask up front

Here are some question you can ask of your counselor up front. Answers to these question will help you evaluate the effectiveness and wisdom of your particular relationship counselor. And don’t be afraid to ask these questions. Often people with fancy certificates and longs strings of letters after their name can seem intimidating and so much more knowledgeable than you. The credentials they carry around may bare down on you and suppress your ability to engage on a equal footing. If that is the case, get over it. Ask your questions and pay close attention to the answers. Even note when individuals fail or refuse to answer. No matter what they say or how they react, you should expect and answer. As a consumer of a service you always have the right to ask questions of the service providers. Of course, the counselors and psychologist may not like this. Some counselors and psychologists, particularly of the Freudian stripe, are trained to maintain an intellectual and emotional distance and may not want to answer your questions. For us this may be an indication of authoritarianism which is something we feel undermines the counseling relationship. Refusal or failure to answer may also be an indication of defensiveness.  The young twenty five year old psychologist may not like you asking her about her personal qualifications and if so, that’s a red flag. In our opinion any counselor that is unable to discuss their limitations and biases with you is a risky bet. You may get good advice, but then you may get nothing but book learning and theory, devoid of personal experience or practical applications. In any case, here are the questions.

1) How old are you? Some of the younger therapists may not like to have this question asked, but if you’re going to be paying a counselor to offer you advice on relationships, you have to ask whether or not they are in a position to ask for advice. The truth of the matter is, a 25 year old counselor who has never had a relationship, only had superficial relationships, never been married, never encountered the intense stress of children, or the demands of balancing work, kids, and spouse, has unresolved childhood issues, is probably not the best person to offer advice. At the best they may be able to provide you with information you can find by doing a Google search. At worst they may offer you inappropriate, even damaging and destructive relationship advice.

2) Have you ever been married and if so, what has been the outcome of this relationship? is it a happy relationship? Are you satisfied at an emotional, intellectual, physical, and (if you are into that) spiritual level? This question is related to the first question and is really about exploring their experience in real relationships. We’ll be honest up front, you are almost certainly going to experience resistance when you ask this question. A lot of counselors are going to like to hide their personal life. Sometimes its an innocent aspect of their training (but don’t let that stop you from getting an answer) and other times they will be hiding their own personal relationship failures. If so, you have to ask the question. Is somebody who cannot achieve a happy and intimate relationship with another individual the right person to be giving you advice? It is your money, ask the question and decide for yourself.

3) Do you have children? This is an incredibly important question and if you have children, or plan on having them any time soon, make sure you ask this question. You simply cannot expect a young, newly married therapist to provide you with anything like acceptable advice on relationships with children if they themselves don’t have children. As parents of four children, one with special needs, we can say with absolute certainty that there was nothing in our upbringing, and nothing in our training, that ever prepared us for the incredible stress and strain of raising kids. From gender pressure and the pressures of a sexist society, to the lack of meaningful social supports, to the incredible difficulties brought about by a society that is largely hostile to children, there is no substitute for the actual experience (critically analyzed) of raising children. Without this experience you may expect anything from passive ignorance to downright stupidity, like the therapist who suggests that as cure for post partum depression one partner should simply bring flowers.

4) What is your perspective of/on gender? Do you believe that gender is something that is biologically determined? Do you believe that men and women respond different emotionally? Do you believe that men and women have different talents? The fact of the matter is, psychology has a huge and recalcitrant gender bias, and a virtual obsession for documenting difference (despite massive similarity) that has existed since at least the mid eighties and that despite several decades of awareness remains a significant problem. From our perspective, and as we will explore a bit later in this series, men and women are not significantly different. Men and women have the same emotions, the same needs (e.g. safety, intimacy, connection, belonging), and the same desires. From our perspective, many of the emotional, physical, child rearing, financial, and intimacy issues that arise in marriages and relationships arise, in part or whole, as a result of the erroneous subscription to gender scripts which often violently force people into roles and behavior patterns that represent only a fraction of their full nature and that ultimately are oppressive and psychologically damaging. Counselors who subscribe to gender dualities, and who uncritically absorbed the gender bias in psychology may (once again) not be the most ideal person to seek advice from. You ask the question, you decide.

Things to watch for during first counseling sessions

Alright, so those are some of the questions you can ask your counselor either immediately or (preferably) during the course of the first couple of sessions. Whether or not they answer these questions, there are other things to pay attention to. Don’t kid yourself. Your psychologist or counselor is watching you. They are watching your body language, your facial expressions, listening to the tone in your voice, and observing the way you interact with others. You should do the same. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they act and behave in social situations (and therapy is a social situation).

1) Do they listen? Watch them and see if they are paying attention. This may seem like a no brainer to you but a few therapists and counselors don’t listen. They sit in their chair, nod their head, but are bored and off in some other world. And if that is the case you have to ask how will they even understand what you are talking about, much less give you solid advice.You don’t think it happens? Years ago when we were in relationship therapist we had a counselor listen to our story for about 45 minutes after which he handed us the book he had just read and said “this is your problem.” He was so ridiculously out to lunch on his diagnosis as to approach the absurd.

2) Do they listen to the concerns of both parties? When Mike and I (or is this Gina and I) we d couple’s counseling years ago therapist had a mantra and that mantra was, it takes two to tango. Except in the case of extremely abusive relationships where one person or individual cannot be made to commit to therapy, this is usually true. Relationship problems are almost always rooted in behavioural patterns, neglects, inconsistencies, and pathologies brought forward from respective childhoods. For reasons we’ll explore later, people who know what a healthy relationship is do not get together with somebody who doesn’t so if you find yourself in difficulties, recite the mantra – it takes two to tango. If you particular counselor doesn’t seem to understand that, or wants to focus all attention on the complaints and concerns of one or the other, our advice would be to get out. Blaming and pointing fingers is likely only going to contribute to the disintegration of the relationship or, in serious cases, emotional and psychological abuse.

3) Are they sensitive to social precursors? For us as sociologists, this is big one. Frankly, psychologists are not trained as sociologist and by and large they ignore the wider social context. That is, there is tendency in psychology, well documented by sociologists critical of psychology, to focus on the individual and blame the victim. When a mother comes in with post-partum depression, the traditional psychologist with their gender blinders and their lack of sociological sophistication will attribute this depression to hormone imbalances or genetics, prescribe dangerous pharmaceuticals that modify brain chemistry, totally ignore the social and political context, and blame the mother (or rather her hormones and genetics). A more sophisticated analysis however will look at gender relations, biases, ridiculous social expectations, intimacy and support issues with the spouse before ever settling in on a diagnosis. I know it’s a lot easier to pin it on hormones and genetics and to pop a pill thereby modifying the emotional responses of the body and bottling it all but, but this doesn’t really address social precursors and may lead to long term physical and emotional sequelea (repressed emotions play havoc with the physical body). Once again it’s your choice. Quick fix or sophisticated analysis.

4) Do counselors speak in a language you can understand? A psychologist with a lot of letters behind their name, and a lot of training to their credit, may be able to use sophisticated sentences and polysyllabic utterances (otherwise known asEPMO), but that shouldn’t figure into client-therapist discourse. If they can’t speak at your level then you have to wonder about their ability communicate in relationships. We’re just saying. It may be nothing, but then again why would you want to take advice from somebody who makes a show of their sophistication and intelligence.

5) Related to the above question, can you ask your counselor or therapist questions without them making you feel stupid. This is very important. A lot of professionally trained individuals with letters like to hide their own ignorance about things by suppressing questions. And, the best way to suppress questions is to draw on the type of shame and exposure that you may have felt in school when you were put on the spot by teachers looking to ridicule or punish. Hopefully it goes without saying that this shouldn’t happen. There is no such thing as a dumb question. If you don’t understand something you have the right to seek clarification as often and as directly as you need. Never feel bad for asking questions and never accept when someone else makes you feel bad about asking questions. If this happens, see it as a serious suppression of your expressive and intellectual abilities which often signals and abuse of power and authority  (or at least an insensitivity). Think twice.

And that about does it. That is our advice on approaching therapeutic relationships. Depending on your background this approach may seem strange at first, but if you consider it you’ll see it is not so odd. The bottom line, this is about balancing out the relationship between you and your therapist. Traditional therapeutic relationships (even traditional relationships with your family doctor) are often very one sided and have the counselor/psychologist/doctor assuming the role of authority and expert while the client takes a passive, almost silent role. This may have been appropriate a couple of decades ago, before the Internet, but nowadays it is better if we all take a more active and critical role towards the people we pay to help us. The bottom line is, despite their degrees and fancy titles, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and others are human beings just like you and just like you they have their strengths and weakness.

As a closing example, let me share a story with you. For a few years I (Michael) had a problem with very dry feet. These were not normally dry feet but excessively dry, cracked, with a horrible almost contagious look. They were so bad that I remember seeing a doctor in St. Albert and the doctor wouldn’t even go near them (talk about lack of professionalism there). For a few years I went to doctors and all they could prescribe was moisturizing creams, salt soaks, and Vaseline, none of which had any effect at all. The thing was, I knew the condition was totally curable because every time we went to Florida, the condition cleared up.

Well, it took me a couple of years but eventually I figured out that the problem was being caused by a vitamin D deficiency. It was cured almost immediately when I began D supplementation. Of course, my doctors didn’t have a clue. Nothing they did help and they were so tightly wrapped up in their western medical box they wouldn’t even consider nutrition. Nevertheless, the results of my little personally applied experiment are hard to deny.

And the moral of the story? The professionals you entrust your health, psyche, and life to don’t know everything and if you assume they do, you’re probably in for a lot of long term difficulty. If I had assumed my doctor knew everything, if I didn’t question his authority and move outside his dominant treatment model, I’d still be walking around with painful and sore feet. Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to professionals. Psychologists, psychiatrist, doctors, counselors, etc. have skills and they may be able to draw on these skills to offer advice and assistance, especially if they are experienced, practiced, and wise. But then again, the point here is, maybe not. Just because I got a fancy sounding degree and a decade of higher education doesn’t mean I know everything. Caveat emptor (buyer beware) applies here. You wouldn’t buy a car or a house without doing at least a little research, and asking at least a few questions. Why would entrust your mental health, and the mental health of your family, to just anybody.

Gina and Mike