Degrees, certifications, training… In France, we’re obsessed with prestigious paperwork. But do credentials necessarily equate competence? And does being competent automatically guarantee effectiveness?
This article will cut through the noise and help you evaluate a therapist beyond their credentials.
Table of Contents
Degrees and Training
Being credentialed, trained, or certified simply means that your therapist has completed some more or less official training and scored high enough to receive that piece of paper.
A doctor, psychologist, or psychotherapist will have a “state degree,” which means the state has put its seal of approval on that particular diploma. Just like it did, for example, in the 70s when psychiatrists were doing lobotomies. Basically, take it with a grain of salt.
It’s an appeal to authority. It sounds serious, and sometimes it is.
Plus, someone who scored 11/20 on their exams has the same diploma as someone who scored 18/20. The paper doesn’t tell you which one you’ll be seeing. So it’s not a guarantee of competence.
Licensed to Practice
Some therapists are “licensed to practice” or “in training.” This means they need to complete hours (sometimes hundreds of hours) of practical work to gain experience before obtaining their final certification. And it doesn’t mean they don’t know the theory, since they generally have to pass their exams before getting licensed.
Competence
A competent therapist has mastered the field: they use their techniques correctly, understand the nuances of their work, recognize their limits and gaps in knowledge… in short, they’re a good practitioner who does their job well.
Furthermore, a competent therapist isn’t necessarily experienced. Someone who recently completed their training might be more competent than someone who studied 20 years ago and hasn’t kept up with recent developments in their field.
Continuing Education and Supervision
In France, there’s no continuing education requirement except for psychiatrists, who must complete CPD (Continuing Professional Development) every 3 years since 2009. Similarly, only psychoanalysts are required to have ongoing supervision. Yet a therapist working alone, without professional support, can easily drift off course, burn out, or make mistakes without realizing it.
Ideally, you’d want a therapist who does both. But unfortunately, since it’s not mandatory, few will have this level of rigor, which is a real shame.
Effectiveness
Effectiveness in a practitioner means you get the results you’re looking for. The reality is that if you see a highly certified and competent podiatrist for a toothache, they’ll be completely ineffective and unable to help you.
This effectiveness will largely depend on the match between your issues and the practitioner’s competence/specialization, but also on their flexibility in adapting to you as well as your active collaboration in the therapeutic process.
The Most Important Thing: The Therapeutic Alliance
You could find someone who’s super credentialed, ultra-competent, and perfectly suited to your issues… but you just don’t click with them. It’s nobody’s fault: you’re simply not compatible.
The right therapist for you, beyond everything else, will be the person you feel comfortable with. This is called the therapeutic alliance – that human connection that makes therapy work, and it’s the key to healing.
Conclusion
Ideally, you’d find a therapist you feel good with, who is credentialed, pursuing continuing education, competent, experienced, effective, in regular supervision, has done their own personal work, takes cultural differences into account, has humility, humanity, empathy, and knows their limits well…
Then you wake up and realize that in reality, it’ll probably be very difficult to find all of that in one person, and fortunately, that won’t prevent you from getting better. But for that to happen, you need to be an active participant in your mental health and remember that practitioners, from psychiatrists to coaches, are first and foremost humans – imperfect, fallible, limited… just like you.
You have the right to be demanding, but don’t put us on a pedestal: you’ll inevitably be disappointed. We’re not gurus. We don’t have all the answers, and even though we do our best, we can make mistakes.
A healthy therapeutic relationship recognizes the therapist’s expertise but also your own expertise about your own life. Treatment is fundamentally teamwork.
And don’t hesitate to interview several therapists before making a choice, and take your time asking all your questions. Your well-being is worth it.