Questions to Ask a Therapist Before You Choose One

Choosing a Therapist · Part 2 of 3

What To Ask Before You’re Ever In The Chair

In the previous post, The Consultation, we talked about treating a therapy consultation like a job interview and paying more attention to how a therapist reacts than to any single answer. This post is the practical companion to that idea: the actual questions worth bringing with you, organized by category, from the basic logistics to the harder ones about safety and boundaries.

Not everyone needs to ask all of these. Pick the ones that actually apply to your situation.

Let’s jump in.

Logistics Questions to Ask

• What’s your fee, and do you accept my insurance, or are you private pay?
• Do you offer a sliding scale, or can I use HSA/FSA funds?
• What’s your cancellation or no-show policy?
• Are you in-person, telehealth, or both?
• What’s your typical availability, and how often would we meet?
• Are you a solo practitioner, or part of a group practice where I might get handed off to someone else?

An important note: A therapist is legally required to tell you their fee before your first paid session, so this isn’t an awkward ask; it’s a right.

Clinical Fit Questions to Ask

• What’s your therapeutic orientation, and why do you use it?
• Have you worked with people who have my specific concern? Not just the general category, but the specifics of what I’m dealing with?
• What does a typical session with you look like?
• How long do you expect treatment to take?
• How do you know when someone’s ready to end therapy?
• Are you licensed independently?
• Are you currently under any kind of supervision?
• If the therapist is licensed independently and not subject to mandatory supervision, a question to ask is: Do you use any kind of consultation on cases?

Style and Rapport Questions to Ask

This category gets skipped more than any other, and it shouldn’t. Two therapists can share the same modality and credentials and still feel completely different to sit across from.

• Are you more active and directive in session, or do you tend to listen and reflect?
• Will you give me feedback and challenge me when you notice a pattern, or is that not really your style?
• How do you balance talking through things with giving me practical tools?
• If you’ve been in therapy before, ask yourself: what did I like, and not like, about how that therapist worked? Bring that comparison into the conversation.

The clearest signal of fit isn’t whether the therapist gave you the “right” answers; it’s whether you feel more settled at the end of the call than you did at the start. If a conversation leaves you more guarded than when it began, that’s information too, regardless of how good the answers sounded on paper.

Deeper Questions Worth Asking

Some questions go beyond logistics and style; they get into safety, boundaries, and accountability.

Has your license ever been sanctioned or suspended? If so, why? This is a completely fair, direct question. It’s not an accusation. You’re not asking, “Have you ever done something bad?” You’re asking whether this person is transparent about their own accountability record. A therapist with nothing to hide can usually answer this plainly. Licensing board history is public record in most states anyway, so you’re not asking for anything you can’t verify yourself; you’re just gauging the potential therapist’s honesty and therefore their credibility and trustworthiness.

How do you handle feedback from clients? Therapy involves telling another person when something isn’t working, including things they said or did. A therapist’s answer here previews how they’ll respond when you push back on them directly, which is going to happen if therapy is doing its job.

I’ve been diagnosed before. What do you know about my diagnosis, and how would you help me with it specifically? This isn’t about testing them with clinical trivia. It’s about whether they can speak concretely about your actual situation rather than generic reassurance. Vague answers here (“I’ve worked with that before” or a statement about how long they’ve been in practice) are a signal to ask a follow-up question, not to let it go.

How do you feel about medication? Necessary, unnecessary, my own decision? Therapists vary quite a bit here, and there isn’t a universally “right” answer. What matters is whether they respect that this is ultimately your decision, made with a prescriber, and not something they’ll pressure you about in either direction.

I’m actively using drugs or alcohol. Will you still provide therapy for me? Answers legitimately vary by therapist and by modality. Some clinicians practice harm reduction and will see you exactly where you are, while some require a period of stability before starting certain trauma modalities (EMDR and Brainspotting both have real clinical reasons for this). And some won’t take you on at all. None of those answers automatically makes someone a bad therapist. What you want is a clear, specific answer and a reason behind it, not a vague dodge.

How do you handle my confidentiality? For example, I’m on probation. What happens if my agent wants to talk to you? This has more nuance than a yes-or-no answer, and a therapist who understands that nuance is a good sign. Confidentiality with a legal or supervisory third party usually runs through a formal release of information, and a competent therapist should be able to explain what they will and won’t share, and how they think about “minimum necessary” disclosure. If they can’t explain this clearly, that’s a problem. This exact scenario is often the highest-stakes confidentiality question a client will ever ask. In my case, for example, I don’t release any information about any of my clients, regardless of whether there’s a signed release, unless I feel it’s warranted and/or with my client’s permission. Other clinicians share quite freely because of their own perspectives on therapy. If this matters to you or applies to your situation, this is an important thing to clarify with the potential therapist before entering that therapeutic relationship.

I’m a sexual assault survivor, and I don’t want to talk about it. You are allowed to say this, and a good therapist will respect it without making you justify the boundary. Watch for whether they treat this as information to work around at your pace, or as something they need to talk you out of.

I live with my partner, and he wants to sit in on sessions because he says I need therapy. This is really a question about whose therapy this is. A good therapist will be clear that the answer is yours to make, not your partner’s, and they will be alert to what it might mean if someone else is trying to control or monitor your treatment.

What if the therapist insists on weekly sessions, but you don’t want to or can’t commit to that? Circle back to the whole premise of the companion post: this is a job interview, and frequency is a job requirement, not a fixed clinical law. Some therapists have real clinical reasons for recommending a certain cadence, especially early on, and they will be able to explain that to you. But a therapist who won’t flex at all, or who makes you feel like you’re already failing before you’ve started, is telling you something about how rigid the relationship is going to be and whether they are there to help you or increase their revenue margin.

A Few Things That Are Always a Red Flag

You don’t need a checklist to know if a consultation went well. But there are a handful of things that are red flags, no matter how good the rest of the conversation felt, and you should be aware of them:

• Any suggestion of a personal, romantic, or financial relationship outside of therapy.
• Refusing to answer or getting hostile when asked about licensing history.
• Sharing another client’s information with you, even in passing.
• Pressuring you toward a decision, whether medication, frequency of sessions, or anything else, without a solid, meaningful, and clinical reason that they can articulate. Also, be aware of whether the therapist refuses to let it go. If they really can’t let it go, they should decline services due to fit and offer you a referral to a clinician who might be a better fit.

If you hit one of these, the consultation should be over.

Everything else on this list is about judgment, not a checklist.

Trust what the conversation—the “interview”—felt like to you.

You don’t need to memorize this whole list before your next consultation. Bring the questions that apply to your situation and trust your feelings on the answers as much as the answers themselves.

Continue the series

Haven’t read Part 1? Start with “The Consultation Is a Job Interview.”

If you’re already in therapy and something’s off, you might want to read “When Something Feels Off with Your Therapist: What to Do Next,” which is also here on my blog page.

About the Author

Jason L. Fairweather, LPC, CSAC, ICS

Jason L. Fairweather is a nationally board-certified psychotherapist and clinical substance abuse counselor, licensed in Wisconsin. Before pursuing formal education and licensure as a clinical therapist, he served in the United States Marine Corps for eight years and as a sex offender agent and in correctional forensics for over eighteen years.

He lives and works in Wisconsin, where he spends his time with his wife and their roommate, Mazie, a red-nosed pitbull who’s so intelligent they swear she trains them. When he’s not working, Jason’s typically spending time with his wife and their dog, reading, writing, or working on apps like the bilateral stimulation tool on this site.

Jason’s a published author and an active member of the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA), the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS).