Member Spotlight: Linda Baker, PsyD – Finding the Right Therapist & Trusting the Healing Process

Table of Contents

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1. What should someone know before their very first therapy session?
2. What if you know something feels off, but you can’t explain what it is?
3. Why does it matter to find a therapist who truly gets you?
4. How do you create emotional safety for your clients?
5. How would you describe your approach to therapy?
6. What’s one mindset shift that helps people start feeling better?
7. Is there any other advice or thoughts you want to share for clients or clinicians?
8. The First Step Means Taking a Leap of Faith

Q: What should someone know before their very first therapy session?

Linda:

If you look statistically and you look at the research around positive therapy outcomes, the number one indicator of positive therapy outcomes is about goodness of fit. It doesn’t matter if somebody’s CBT trained, it doesn’t matter if they’re ACT trained, it doesn’t matter their modality. What really matters is how comfortable you feel with that person, if you feel like you could feel safe, if you feel heard…The more honest and authentic you can be, obviously, the better the therapy process is going to go.

If you meet with somebody and it doesn’t feel like a good fit, it’s totally okay to move on. There are so many different kinds of clinicians out there and there’s absolutely an opportunity to find somebody that you just feel safe and seen and heard with…

It’s sort of like dating. You’re allowed to go and meet and see how it feels and maybe give somebody a second shot if you’re sort of curious. And if it’s just not right, it’s not right.

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Q: What if you know something feels off, but you can’t explain what it is?

Linda:

I think that’s sort of the whole purpose of therapy, actually. People [often]…notice a behavior…a feeling,…a mood shift,…[or] something sort of internally. And it’s actually really common for people to not know exactly what’s going on for them, especially when so many of our root issues come from historical experiences. It’s really hard to name that when we grow up and become adults.

[Therapy] gently brings that internal struggle to the surface and gives a voice to it. So then people can really understand what’s happening for them, and then they know what to do about it. That’s the good news about therapy, right? We can see what the issue is, we can name it, and then there’s a plan. There’s hope that can come from it.

It could be something really mild — I just feel really off and I don’t know why, or my energy or my motivation has really shifted, or my sleep is off, or I’ve been really moody with my partner….And that’s kind of the whole point of therapy: we sort of translate that for folks.

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Q: Why does it matter to find a therapist who truly gets you?

Linda:

You have to feel really safe. I don’t mean just physically safe, but you have to feel emotionally safe with the provider you’re working with because this experience is so intrinsically vulnerable and it’s so intimate.

I have sort of a recipe for safety. For me, safety is consistency, predictability, and reliability. If a clinician shows up in those ways, then oftentimes what that does to the client’s nervous system is it helps them take a nice deep breath. So for me, whoever the client is, hopefully that therapist has expertise in working with all sorts of people. And regardless of their demographic or their background, what’s important for a clinician is to make sure that you’re providing that super safe, consistent, reliable, predictable space so the client can explore whatever those deep vulnerabilities are for them.

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Q: How do you create emotional safety for your clients?

Linda:

I think a big one for me is showing up authentically…It’s so important to be really mindful and attuned to yourself coming into sessions. So if that means meditating, if that means going outside, if that means a hot bath, tea — whatever the thing is to ground you. To me, that’s so important. So you can show up and really be present and have an internal openness with clients…even clients virtually can sense when you’ve got space and room for them.

It’s hard because there’s so many things going on in the world and life is hard. But to me, it’s crucial for therapists to make sure that they’ve got internal room so they can provide it for the client. So then we’ve got this space we’ve co-created where we both can explore and make sense of things.

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Q: How would you describe your approach to therapy?

Linda:

I’m classically CBT trained. That was kind of the approach when I was in school. I’ve since shifted into Internal Family Systems. [For] Internal Family Systems…I conceptualize all of us like we’re a bus and we’ve got all these different parts of us riding on the bus. Depending on the environment, a part of us will hop up and grab the wheel. Sometimes that’s really beautiful because it’ll drive us into prosperity [and] we make good choices. Sometimes the part is pretty problematic and drives us into a ditch…

We’re not…making people feel more ashamed around whatever the issue is that they’re having. It’s about approaching a part with genuine curiosity, understanding, compassion, and acceptance. That feels really important to me.

In terms of what makes me different as a clinician… I went through school wanting to work with women…[But] I kept getting shuffled into working with men, [including] men’s prisons, men’s jail, halfway houses, those sorts of things. And now…over half my practice is working with men. I get to use my deeply feminist intentions and background to help men behave differently in their relationships. It’s sort of an inadvertent way of helping the population I was really focused on originally, by helping the demographic that has a lot of interaction and impact on them.

I was also the second ever graduating class from the University of Denver’s International Disaster Psychology program, so I’m very deeply trained in trauma [and] working with refugees, asylum seekers, high-intensity circumstances. I would strongly recommend people to have a really good foundation around trauma because it’s so pervasive and it really shows up with whoever you’re working with.

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Q: What’s one mindset shift that helps people start feeling better?

Linda:

One thing I say to clients constantly is: it’s not a problem unless it’s a problem. Clients will come to me and [their beliefs are] based off of our culture, based off of these pressures, or based off of what they grew up believing.

And it’s so interesting when you really get into clinical work with most clients: a lot of times things are not what they seem. Sometimes the concept or the value that they’re bouncing off of isn’t actually their own. It was something that was ingrained in them via culture, via family of origin, or their own history…I say to folks all the time: maybe this isn’t as bad as you think it is, and maybe it’s not actually a problem in terms of aligning with your own values and what matters for you.

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Q: Is there any other advice or thoughts you want to share for clients or clinicians?

Linda:

Something I would recommend to therapists…is finding your own voice around what makes the most sense to you because then it’ll make the most sense to clients.

[Also,] check in with your clients. There’s this idea of trying to get it right all the time, and I think in this field there’s a good amount of perfectionism. It’s so important to ask clients Is this going well for you? Is it not going well for you? What feels good? What doesn’t feel good?

I’d strongly encourage clients: all you have to do when you come to therapy is show up and be yourself. That sounds really simple, but in a lot of circumstances, it’s so hard because it does feel so exposing and vulnerable. So I just really encourage people to take the leap and just see how it goes…Trust your gut, trust your insights, and then go from there.

You don’t have to wait until it gets so bad that you don’t know what to do next or you feel incapacitated. Therapy is a luxury…we get to have this experience, we get to have these opportunities…If you have access, take advantage of it. There are people out there that are good at helping, that are interested in helping. And you don’t have to suffer alone.

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