How to Get Help
If you're struggling and need help with your relationships, where should you turn? Libby shares her advice on how to find good help. Meta analyses of studies that show that therapeutic alliance matters more than therapeutic modality for positive outcomes in therapy: https://psycnet.apa.org/PsycARTICLES/journal/pst/55/4 APA article explaining: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/11/ce-corner-relationships
Transcript
Libby Sinback:
So sometimes when we are doing something different in our relationships, like we're engaging in a different relationship style, like polyamory, sometimes what happens is everything goes sideways, everything gets messy. You start to feel overwhelmed. Maybe you and your partners are fighting more. Maybe just things feel like they're going off the rails, and you think to yourself, what do I do? How do I stop this? How can I turn this around? Am I the problem? Are other people the problem? I don't know what to do. I feel like I need help. But how do you get help? What kind of help should you get? That's what we're going to talk about today. First of all, I want to say that finding help can be a struggle. Often the first thing you'll hear is that you should find a therapist.
Libby Sinback:
But people say that as though that's easy, like that, that's simple and straightforward when it's really not. There's not a magical therapist's book that has every therapist that you could possibly want to work with all broken down. There's not like a magical therapist wizard that's going to help you find the exact one for you, who's going to understand you, who you're going to vibe with, who you can trust, and who has the modalities and the tools and the wherewithal to actually help you. And unfortunately, what I've heard from a lot of my clients, and also folks in my community, is that when they have sought professional help, they have, instead of finding someone supportive and helpful and open, they've met with judgment and even prejudice about their chosen relational or sexual practices. So, you know, just go find a therapist. Doesn't necessarily help you when a lot of professionals are pretty ignorant about polyamory and might even pathologize that. Like, I actually had that happen. Not to me, but I was consulting with a therapist, actually, and their client had some interest in kink, and one of their supervisors, the therapist supervisors, basically told this therapist that their client had a sex addiction, sex action, because of the interest in kink.
Libby Sinback:
And luckily, this therapist was like, that doesn't sound quite right to me. I'm going to check on a couple other sources. And so she and I talked, and I said, you know, I'm not a specialist in sex addiction, but that's not what this sounds like to me. This sounds like a perfectly normal and healthy thing. But therapists can sometimes pathologize things that are not actually pathology, especially things that they are either uncomfortable with or just uneducated about. So find a therapist is a beautiful idea, but it's not necessarily enough to get you there. But before I go more into that, let's actually slow down here and zoom back and talk about why you may not actually need help, even though it might feel like you need help in the moment. The first thing that I want to say is a reason why you don't need help is that you are not broken and in need of fixing.
Libby Sinback:
I'm going to say that again, no matter who you are, I don't care who you are. If you are listening to me right now, I know that you are not broken and in need of fixing. There may be something going on for you that you want to go differently. You may want to learn different ways of being in relationship. You might want more skills, more tools, a different reframe for how you're seeing things, sure. But that does not mean you're broken. Another reason why you may not need help is that you might already have it. You might already have a lot of resources around you in the form of friends, family and partners and other humans who you may not need to pay, who might be able to support you through what's happening for you.
Libby Sinback:
I don't think every situation requires professional help, and I don't even think sometimes professional help is the answer to all situations. And lastly, I'll say that you may not need help because you may have what you need to figure it out. I mean, I often say to my own clients that I don't necessarily think that they need me to move through whatever they're moving through that cause them to reach out to me for support. I might be able to help guide them in a direction that might help them get there faster sometimes. But I actually think most people are pretty intelligent and can move through difficult situations if they can just trust themselves. So if you have a lot of self trust, you may not need a lot of help. Now here are some reasons why you might want help anyway, which is if you live in a western developed nation or a developed nation that has been heavily influenced by the west, you grew up in a culture with a lot of toxic ideas that have inevitably permeated many, many aspects of your life, including potentially your family, your upbringing, your sense of self, your sense of what it means to be a person in the world. And you might have learned ways of relating that you would like to intentionally work on unlearning.
Libby Sinback:
And kind of like if you wanted to learn how to play the violin, you might need a person who knows how to play the violin to give you some instruction on how to get there. And you might even just want a space where you can practice playing the violin and playing it and playing it and playing it until you get good at it. Another reason you might want help is you might just need a container to unpack what's happening, because everything is just coming at you in every direction. There are these just waves crashing over you and you're feeling overwhelmed. And having someone just hold that container and maybe help you name some of the things that are happening so that you can get a handle on it and make sense of it and not feel so alone in it would really help you. Another reason you might want help is that you might just want an additional set of eyes on what is happening. Someone who can kind of check your work, but who doesn't have any agenda or any connection to the situation. So, like, no dogs in the fight.
Libby Sinback:
And the last reason you might want help that I could think of, although there are probably more, is that, you know, yes, you might be able to figure this out on your own, but you would like to find someone who maybe has some skills or some tools or some experience or some training that might help you get to where you want to go faster or just more effectively. So, cool, you've decided. Yes, I would like some help. Now what? Well, I think the next step is to consider what type of help you are actually looking for. Are you looking for just that space to do some unpacking and do some sort of orienting yourself to what's happening for you so that you can get grounded and clear? Are you looking for someone to put their eyes on what's happening for you and share their opinion or check your work? Are you looking for skills? Are you looking to build skills? Are you looking to just get tools? Are you looking for, like, more practical type help? Are you looking for some deeper understanding of the patterns that are happening within you and maybe trying to maybe unwind them or unlearn them? Or are you looking for someone to just, like, take in your situation and help steer you through it? It's like you're in a storm and you just want someone else with you to help steer you through it. And it could be one of those things. It could be more than one of those things. It could be all of the above.
Libby Sinback:
That would be okay, but it's just worth getting clear on. Like, what are the reasons that I'm looking for help? Like, what are my goals? And I always ask any potential client that's about to work with me, I always ask them this question, like, what would be your hope. What would be the amazing outcome on the other side of working with me that would make the time and the money and the work that you put in worth it. That was the best thing that I could have gotten from this experience. I think if you haven't gotten clear on what you really are hoping to get out of help, it might be really hard to figure out which kind of help is the kind of help that you want. Because while I do agree that sometimes seeing a therapist is absolutely the right option, sometimes it's not. Sometimes a therapist doesn't have in their toolkit what you need, or the type of therapist that you're seeing might not have the tools that you are looking for. Now, initially, I had a whole plan to do this episode where I was going to, like, run down every different type of therapy, every different type of therapy, certification, talk about coaching, talk about other options like spiritual healers, plant medicine guides, retreat leaders, and peer support people.
Libby Sinback:
And I like, there are so many things that would be an incredibly long episode and it wouldn't really give you what you need. Probably one thing that will happen when you are looking for help is that you might meet with some people that are not actually going to be able to help you. You might do a consult with them, or you might even do a first session with them. And you might go into that session and come out of it feeling like that was not for me. But if you don't have a sense of what you're looking for and you don't have a sense of what to look out for, then you might end up spending more time than you should sitting with a professional who isn't actually going to help you. And so again, the first and foremost thing that I would say is figure out what you're hoping to get out of help. And if the professional that you talk to doesn't ask you what you want, make sure that you tell them what you want and you ask them, hey, like, is this a thing you have experience with? Is this a thing you help people with? A competent professional will tell you, yes, I have experience with that. No, I don't have direct experience with that, but I have some similar experiences.
Libby Sinback:
Or no, I'm uneducated about that and I am not a good fit for you. It is definitely the case that not all professionals are for everyone. Another question you might ask is, should I see a therapist? Like someone with credentials? Should I go to someone who has a PhD, or should I go see a social worker, or should I see a counselor, or should I see a licensed marriage and family therapist. What credentials should I be looking for? And the thing that I want to say about that is that credentials aren't a thing that I look for when I'm looking for a professional to work with. Like, letters after people's names look nice and they, they sound nice, but I don't think they actually tell you very much about what that person is actually like in a room. What I do look at is what they say about themselves on their website. What I look at is what training outside of their degree and their certifications and their credentials, the letters after their name are, because I would only ever want to work with somebody who does ongoing education and growth as a professional and who is up on some of the latest ways that people are thinking about help. Now, you might think I'm just saying, don't care about credentials or letters after names because I myself am not a therapist.
Libby Sinback:
I'm a coach. And I've seen a lot of derogatory stuff said about coaches and how like, you know, we don't have any, like, real training, we don't have any real credentials, and that you should see a therapist and not a coach. All coaches are charlatans. And what I would say to that is that some coaches are definitely charlatans, for sure, because coaching is an unregulated profession in the United States. So you can literally just tomorrow, anybody listening to this podcast could just say, tomorrow, hey, I'm a coach, and put up a website and make an Instagram and start talking about how to help you. And they wouldn't necessarily have any training or knowledge about what it actually means to do that. Absolutely. That is true.
Libby Sinback:
And there are people like me who are highly trained, highly specialized, have a lot of experience and have a track record of helping clients, and also have a lot of other people who have pretty decent credentials themselves signing off on their work. And I, like I said, I have heard many stories that have always sets my hair on fire from people who have been to see credentialed, licensed therapists who have said some really, really harmful and pathologizing stuff to them that really mess them up. And I guess it's worth saying that, like, psychological institutions in the west have roots in upholding systems of oppression by pathologizing perfectly rational psychological responses to systemic trauma and marginalization. And psychological institutions also often dismiss indigenous healing practices and ways of knowing, or when it's shown that they actually work, they as like with psychedelics or with somatic therapy, those western institutions will co opt those ways of knowing. And healing practices and start selling certifications in them to make lots of money. And I'm saying all this because. Partly because I guess I'm a little defensive. I was poking around TikTok and Instagram years ago, and I ran across a couple of different posts from therapists, basically ripping apart people in the coaching profession, saying that they're untrained and illegitimate and should be doing what they're doing.
Libby Sinback:
And again, some of that is true, and some of that is also true for credentialed licensed therapists as well. And so, and the, and the gatekeeping that happens through the credentialing process is in some ways a part of white supremacy capitalist dominant culture and can keep people out of healing professions that might belong there, but that can't access a university degree or spend hundreds of hours doing free therapy as part of their training while getting paid no money. For myself, I have had a number of professionals that I've worked with on a personal level over the years, both people with phds and people who have no training at all, no credentials, no certifications, no nothing. And I've received tremendous healing and transformation from some of those folks, and I've received not great help at all from other ones. And I would say the degrees and credentials haven't been the thing that mattered. But, okay, so maybe you're in this place where you're like, but Libby, if I can't even, like, look at people's credentials or where they got their degree or what license they have, then how the heck do I find somebody that I can trust? Here are some things that I look for. First of all, I look for referrals, so I ask people that I already trust. Hey, do you know someone? Or, hey, do you know someone who knows someone? I might even ask in a, you know, an online group that I'm in, or I might ask at a local meetup or something.
Libby Sinback:
I mean, of course your mileage may vary, and what might work for one other person might not work for you. But I also really trust other people's lived experience with a professional. And that's also how I find out the people that I wouldn't want to see, right. The person who said to my friend, oh, probably the reason why you're having trouble in your relationship is because you're polyamorous. Well, okay, I know not to see that person. Another thing that I do is, like, I look up on Google, like, what my problem is, like, what is the thing I'm trying to address and then just kind of do some research to get a sense of like what are the ways that this can actually be helped? I'll look at research. I will again kind of ask around, like if I know somebody who seems like they are in a better place than they were, I might be like, hey, what was the thing that actually helped you? Like, if I'm thinking, oh, maybe somatic work is something that I'm interested in, then I might also go to like the somatic experiencing international website and just look at their practitioner directory. And from there I will actually start to check out people's websites and their social media, if they have any, or if they have any other content that they're putting out.
Libby Sinback:
Now that I will say, I have worked with some amazing professionals that don't put out any content at all. And definitely there are people who put out amazing content on Instagram or TikTok or what have you, who probably are actually better at content creation than they are at direct support of individuals or couples. But that's not always the case. Sometimes that content is what helps you understand who this person is and how they think and whether you would vibe with them or not, you can also get a sense of their values. At this point, I wouldn't work with any professional in a healing realm that didn't have some kind of decolonization that they were trying to do of their work. And again, that's because so much of the healing space even, and not just therapists, but like coaches and somatic healers and plant medicine journey guides and all of these things, they all exist still in the context of this capitalistic, heteropatriarchal, white supremacist power over colonialist dominant culture. And if they haven't done any confronting or unpacking of that stuff, stuff, they probably are going to have it weaving in their work. And there's so much spiritual bypassing in the healing communities.
Libby Sinback:
There's all this white supremacist gaslighting, and I'm talking about even really lovely and well meaning people who just simply haven't unpacked all the gunk of this toxic culture. Even me. I haven't unpacked it all. I am not perfect. I'm under no illusion that I don't have the capacity actually to cause great harm just because of the, the culture I was raised in and the body I inhabit. But at least I'm aware of that and I check myself. And I would only want to work with somebody who also is checking themselves on that. And obviously, if you're polyamorous, swinger, queer, etcetera you don't have to work with a polyamorous, swinger, queer, whatever, professional, but you want to make sure that that person is expressing clearly and straightforwardly that they are affirming, not just friendly, not just aware, but affirming of whatever those identities are that you have.
Libby Sinback:
I would also generally look at what they say about their training and experience. Now, I actually wouldn't tell you that you shouldn't see someone who is untrained or who is inexperienced. I would just want them to be upfront about that. It's important that if you are like, say, a peer coach, that you're not like, presenting yourself as something that you're not. Because I think peer coaching can be really, really great and supportive. And I've had clients who've worked with me and they've also worked with a peer coach who's like more of an influencer on Instagram and they found both of those experiences, like, really supportive. And the peer coaches that I know, like, they know their lane in the same way that as a coach I know my lane. There are certain things that I would say I am not a good fit for, and there are certain things that I would.
Libby Sinback:
Where I would get nervous if somebody doesn't have a sense of where they would work with you and where they would say, that's not my lane. That's not something I have experience and that's not something that I have any training around. Ideally, any professional that you would be considering working with would offer you some kind of consultation ahead of time, whether that be a, like a quick 30 minutes or half hour phone call or whether you could at least, you know, correspond with them via email first, again, to get a sense of, hey, have you helped people like me before? Do you understand my problem? And are you able to articulate to me a little bit about how you might be able to help me? And then do you have the ability to think about that and evaluate whether their approach is something that you want to do and that's going to work for you. You need to really figure out what you're buying into. And I actually feel like this is one of the things that I love about what I do as a coach is that I do do that. I do consult with people and we make a contract for what we're going to work on together, not like a written contract, but like a. A verbal contract. But a lot of therapists that I worked with in the past never asked me, like, what my goals were and, like, talked to me about how we were going to get there.
Libby Sinback:
So now I want to talk about some, some sort of yellow flags, like things to just kind of watch out for when you're talking to a potential professional that you want to work with or even while you've started working with them, but you're still maybe in the evaluation stages. The first thing is to watch out if your professional is giving advice. Now, I will say most therapists and coaches don't generally give advice. And it's kind of funny because a lot of people, when they talk about like, oh, if you're credentialed, you shouldn't be telling people what to do. Like, I don't think any helping, healing professional should be telling you what to do. That doesn't mean that I like, never give advice to my clients or that I've never received advice from a coach or a therapist or other healer type person. Definitely that's the case. But there's a difference between saying, hey, maybe you should try this and see how it goes for you versus this is what you should do and this is how you should do it.
Libby Sinback:
The first one I would say is perfectly okay. The second one, like I would, I would consider that an orange or even red flag. Ideally, what's happening in a professional help setting is you're getting tools and guidance to get down to your own truth and what's right for you. And maybe the professional is going to give you options and ideas, but not so much directives. Another one to watch out for. And again, it's a yellow flag, not a red flag, is self disclosure. So what I mean by self disclosure is just the professional sharing a lot about themselves. Now, again, I totally talk about myself in sessions sometimes, because sometimes self disclosure is really valuable when that professional's experience can actually just help the client in some important way.
Libby Sinback:
But someone who just doesn't have any training or experience, uh, working with clients, might not have that discernment of when to self disclose and when it would just be really inappropriate. Now, again, I it's a yellow flag. Like, if you're working with someone who's doing a lot of self disclosure, but they're kind of more in that mentorship or kind of big brother, big sister kind of role with you, that I think it's okay for them to talk about themselves as long as that is serving you. And then you're also able to take whatever they say with a grain of salt. And I guess the flip side of self disclosing being a yellow flag is sometimes especially therapists are trained not to do any self disclosing and to the point where it actually feels detrimental to the client because they're trained to be like this blank slate. And I think that that's actually dishonest because we know we're talking to a real person with their own thoughts and ideas and experiences. And sometimes just showing up as a person can really help the relationship between the client and the professional. And the last yellow flag I've kind of already talked about, which is if the person just has no experience with the things that you're struggling with now, I don't think that all of the people that you would seek out for professional help need to have your exact identities and life experiences.
Libby Sinback:
Like, that's not necessarily reasonable. But if they have no experience through their community, through their training, through previous clients on what's going on with you or your relationship style or your identities, you may end up doing a lot of educating of them more than they actually help you. And from people who I've spoken to, who that's been their experience, it can just be very frustrating to, like, be paying to educate the professional that's supposed to be helping you. And of course, also, if that professional doesn't have experience and they have a lot of biases, then those biases could come out in the work that you're doing together. At the same time, if the professional can, like, name that and like, hold that, sometimes that's okay. But other times it just feels like you're under attack in a place where you're supposed to be getting help. Now here are the red flags. So these would be the things that, like, if these things happened to me within the context of me getting professional help, I would be out of there? Like, hell.
Libby Sinback:
No. The first one. If the professional thinks that you need them in order to function or feel okay, no, absolutely not. Anyone who promises a particular outcome or result or who says they have some kind of like, magic bullet or system that will definitely work for you, I wouldn't trust that. My experience of working with clients is that it is an unfolding and an emergence, and I don't believe in guaranteed magic bullets. Okay, another one. If you have someone who thinks that they know better than you how to live your life, run. Just run away.
Libby Sinback:
They don't. They don't. And they have some kind of narcissistic savior complex. No. Run. If you have someone who thinks that you are broken and in need of fixing, if they are pathologizing normal and reasonable responses to difficult situations, if they are overly individualizing everything that's happening to you as though it's some part of your neurosis, I would not be with that person. I guess there's a little bit of nuance here because there are people who see themselves as sort of the victim of everything, and sometimes those people do have to have a mirror held up to them about how they are part of the problem. But if somebody is making all of you the problem, then I would say, I don't think so.
Libby Sinback:
If you're working with someone who undermines your own trust within yourself, if they are actively seem to be undermining your self trust, I would probably move away from that relationship. Now, again, nuance here. If you have a lot of certainty that you're fine, and then you're showing up in an office with a therapist, or showing up with a coach trying to get support, they might hold a mirror up and say, hey, like, maybe look at this thing over here, too. I think there's a nuance here of, like, being able to confront a client about a difficult truth that they may not be seeing or a blind spot that they have, versus undermining their own ability to trust themselves. If you are working with someone who crosses boundaries with you in a way that doesn't feel right, and I have to say this because this absolutely does happen. And it's not just like sexual inappropriateness within a therapeutic or coaching or healing setting, although that does happen, and, um, it often doesn't get addressed or reported. But there are other places where someone might cross a boundary that just squicks you out, and maybe you even kind of try to talk yourself out of it. But I'm telling you, if somebody crosses a boundary with you and it just doesn't feel right, it's not a good person for you to work with.
Libby Sinback:
And that doesn't necessarily have to make the person bad. You could just be like, that's just not, for me, another red flag. A big one here. If you are working with someone whose approach is to, like, break you down in order to build you back up, or if you're in a healing space where that is the vibe, that's more culty, that's designed to be a high control environment, and I'll just throw out these two things that I would say are red flags for me. If I was working with someone wanting to do relationship work with either one partner, or more than one partner is a therapist or a coach or whomever who is really just creating a safe arena for you to have a fight with your partner, but just with a referee who's going to interpret what you say to each other, I don't think that's useful. I would get away from that. If the person doing couples work is not like actively disrupting the patterns that are happening and intervening, then like I said, you're kind of just paying someone to fight in front of them. And I hear that a lot from my couples clients, that that has been their experience.
Libby Sinback:
So if it feels like that after like one or two sessions, just get out of there. I would stop working with that person. I would also not work with a couples therapist if they promise to save your relationship, because they absolutely can't do that. And that is hubris that I just would be really uncomfortable with. Realistically, no one can fix you because as I said at the beginning, you aren't broken. And what I'll tell you, the last thing I will tell you about finding help, is that if it feels like a good fit and you feel like you're being helped, it's probably the right place for you. And you might at some point move on from that healing and helping relationship to another one at another time. But I would just trust what feels right to you more than I would trust someone's credentials, more than I would trust any supposed to's, more than I would trust what that professional is telling you.
Libby Sinback:
I would listen to yourself. And there's actually scientific evidence to back this up. So in multiple studies on whether therapy has good outcomes or not, the single biggest factor was not the particular method the therapist used. Because the studies have gone the gamut of all different kinds of therapeutic methods. The single most determining factor of whether that therapy was actually helpful to that client was whether the client and the therapist had a good and trusting relationship, whether they had good rapport, whether the client believed that the therapist cared about them and wanted them to do well. So really trying to get help is like dating, and you should probably go on some first dates that are not going to work out so that you can find a healing helping relationship that will actually work for you at the end of the day. Therapy, coaching, peer support, neuro linguistic programming, tantric yoga, plant medicine retreats, group coaching, couples retreat, weekends, orgasmic meditation, you name it. None of it is magic.
Libby Sinback:
None of it is magic. And lots of those things help. Lots of those things help some people some of the time and don't help others, but all of it can help. You don't need to be fixed because you're not broken, but you might want some help growing and changing and change. Work can be like any other type of exercise, like it can sometimes help to have someone like a personal trainer help you get your form, help you show up consistently to practice, help you see your blind spots, and help you build your skill and endurance and capacity and growth. But ultimately, it's your life and you're the one who has to do the work. So watch out for the yellow and orange flags. Do your research and trust yourself.
