Sorry I'm posting this in this area but no one seems to read the stuff under therapy/help and all that :)
Ok so several weeks ago I learned that my husband has ADD, we had our first therapy session yesterday. I need some guidance on what to look for in a therapist. She did ask my husband the official questions to determine if he has ADD and all that. And talked a tiny bit about ADD, but not much. She focused on our marriage, which yes, it needs help, but she was asking us to do things that I know are hard for my husband to do with his ADD. I told her many of problems with him and how ADD has done this or that to us, but she just hardly addressed that. Are therapists just more vague on the first visit? She didn't talk directly to my husband at all with any help to deal with it. Just asked us marital questions. Which like i said is fine, but I just feel she wasn't taking a very affective route, especially when ADD is the huge thorn in our marriage. ADD is supposedly one of her specialties but I felt like i knew more about it than she did. She was nice and easy to talk to, but I just don't know if she'll talk more about the ADD in future sessions or if I've already gotten an accurate taste of her already. She focused a lot on communication, which yes we need much help with, but it's the ADD that makes it so hard for my husband to communiate with me, seems like that should have taken part in the communication discussion but it didn't! Is this normal? Am I expecting too much from her? Should I not expect much talk about ADD for some reason? At least not yet?
Hmmm
Submitted by BreadBaker on
I'm no expert, but that sounds fishy to me, especially the part about you knowing more about ADD than she! I'd look into other doctors, but that's just my knee-jerk reaction. Someone with more experience may have better/more input.
counselor needs to get to know you
Submitted by arwen on
Cathryn, your counselor doesn't know either of you very well at a first meeting. Understanding your individual personalities, and how you and your spouse interact, are just as important as the ADD issues in determining a path forward for counseling. Your counselor may be trying to "establish a baseline" of your relationship before addressing specific ADD-related issues.
I know that when you are having ADD-related problems, it's hard to be patient, but it's very important to recognize that counseling is in no way any kind of quick fix. My ADD-spouse has been in counseling for 15 years, and we are just now beginning to get to a sort of "maintenance mode". The counseling was joint for a period of time at the beginning, and we have had to return to joint counseling at various points over the years.
I would suggest you consider giving your counselor a few sessions to establish a relationship with you and your spouse, and then if the ADD issues aren't being addressed, raise this question with the counselor.
As far as how do you know if a therapist is "the one", I don't know that there's any benchmark or barometer. It's not too difficult to determine that a counselor isn't working for you, it only takes a few sessions for incompatibilities to surface, but it's harder to tell the difference between a so-so counselor and a good one. I would say that a good counselor will listen carefully and consider your input, but that doesn't mean they will necessarily handle the dialog the way you think they should. It's important to recognize that while your spouse may be the only one with ADD, there may be yet other factors that are having negative impacts on your marriage, and these could be contributed by either of you -- the counselor has to keep this in mind and make sure that neither of you controls the counseling agenda or directs the discussion but that the counseling serves your mutual goals. I had reservations about our counselor at first, but I felt that my husband's comfort level with the counselor was more important than mine, and the counseling has turned out pretty well for us. Progress with ADD counseling is often slow, which makes it harder to evaluate the quality of the counseling. I'm sorry I can't give a more helpful answer on this.
Good luck!