How can you tell whether you are in good hands?

Authors: Dr. phil. Ulli Biechele, Dipl.-Psych. Margret Göth, Dipl.-Psych. Thomas Heinrich and Dipl.-Psych. Andrea Lang

Usually you will arrange a number of sessions with your therapist or counsellor where you will find out how well you can work together. During this time you will have the chance to check how much you can trust one another, how you both deal with misunderstandings and whether you can imagine opening up and showing your full personality, even the sides of yourself that could be very embarrassing for you. In counselling and therapy involving language mediators, this also obviously applies to the language mediator too.

Questions you can ask yourself:

• Do you feel trust and empathy?
• Do you feel that you are in good hands, understood and respected?
• How openly are you able to talk about being lesbian, gay, bisexual trans*, intersex or queer?
• How much does the therapist know about the life of LGBTQI* people?
• Does the therapist give you the impression that they understand and recognise your LGBTQI* way of living?

For information on what to do when you feel you are not in good hands, see our webpage “what to do when you feel you are not in good hands”.