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My First Talk With My New Online Therapist Was a Train Wreck. Here’s the Three Biggest Red Flags.
Yesterday I had the “opening conversation”, and it did not go well.
I’ve been doing online therapy for about four months. My first counselor was great. I knew she was a good fit from our first conversation, when she quoted my favorite zen author, Charlotte Joko Beck. It was a little weird that she was only a bit older than my oldest daughter, but she was a good listener, and knew how to ask the hard questions.
Unfortunately she was a little too good, and Talkspace, the online service that connected us promoted her to supervise other therapists. I hope that goes well for her; if she can make more therapists like her, the world will be a better place.
But that left me needing to find a new therapist.
Talkspace did something weird: created scarcity in an abundant space.
They try to make it easy; there’s an automated process that lets you keep all your information from your previous therapist and then gives you three choices for a new one — little pictures and bios and lists of things they treat.
