I commend you for your courage to seek out help in the most personal aspect of your life: individual counseling. Now how do you choose the right individual counselor? Here are some guidelines to help you narrow down your search; things everyone needs to know about individual counseling who needs the kind of help that you need.

First: What type of individual counselor is needed for individual counseling? For help in individual therapy you need a therapist, not a counselor. The correct title for this type of expert is known as a Marriage and Family Therapist or a Clinical Psychologist.

Why do you need a therapist for individual counseling you ask? The most important reason is that only an MFT or a Psychologist has been trained PROPERLY and EXCLUSIVELY for “therapy” in individual counseling which is what it takes to deal with your specific issues. It takes a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 20 years to be trained as an individual counselor alone.

All the other professionals under the Who You Don’t Want column are either trained in other issues (with very little training in therapy) or are not trained at all in individual counseling or in individual therapy. For example: to be a life or personal coach there is no training requirements, educational requirements or licensing qualification needed in individual counseling. In other words, no protection or guaranty for you.

Second: Your comfort is important in individual counseling. Among MFTs and Clinical Psychologists who do individual counseling, there are many different ways that they can choose from to work with individual counseling issues. They can be more directive (in your face and tell you what to do) or they may be the type of therapist that sits with you and understands your pain (I do both). They can treat you from the head or treat you from the heart. They can treat you from a sterile medical perspective, or from a personal and loving perspective. Individual counseling may need both perspectives to achieve your goals; however, individual counselors usually use one perspective more than the other. This determines your comfort zone within the individual counseling session.

Third: You also need to know if the individual counselor was required to get therapy in order to graduate from their University in the Master’s or Doctorate Program? This is not common knowledge to the general public. How can a therapist understand what a person is going through in therapy if they have never sat on that couch and been through that experience? Some Universities require their students to attend therapy and some do not. I have seen a huge difference between therapists who have “been there, done that”, and those whom have not. You need to ask about this. Even better, call the University and find out if they require it or not!