For talk therapy, I think it matters a lot. Especially if some of one’s angst is caused by the current state of political affairs.
When my husband died, I was referred at my own request to talk with a grief therapist. The therapist turned out to be quite faith-based. As an atheist, I found her advice unhelpful as it was often rooted in a god belief system. Nice lady, just the wrong person for the job. I switched to someone who put no emphasis on religion and did much better with her.
As for Trump tradesman types, I take them on a case-by-case basis. I never bring up politics stuff, but if they do, I’ll carry on a conversation so long as it remains civil and mutually respectful.
One fellow, a pest control guy I’d used for years, began ranting about n****rs on his last visit 2 years ago. I was beyond appalled. I’ll never use him again, and I make sure to tell others who may be thinking of using him. His racism has cost him more than he knows.
What if you ask the therapist if they support Trump and they refuse to answer either way?
Some, maybe many, therapists are extremely hesitant about disclosing virtually anything about who they are as individuals. It’s a “boundary issue”, fearful that information about who they are as private individuals could result in transference. Sharing their political stripes would just be considered bad practice form to them. Information about who they are in their own private lives should be shared thoughtfully and selectively with consideration to its possible impact on the therapeutic process.
Should a fundamentalist require that a therapist share their values and belief systems? Or can an atheist provide good therapy to a very religious individual, respectful of the client’s belief system, keeping their own belief system and values to themselves and out of the therapeutic relationship?
Personally I’d hesitate to go to anyone who agreed to answer the question, and run away from someone who needlessly brought their belief systems into the room, political, religious, or otherwise. Better to lean to the blank slate side as the default.
Then I have learned that they construct an impenetrable firewall between their personal views and their therapy sessions, and that is worth knowing. At that point I would probably make a decision using lots of other data as well - recommendations, professional background, etc. I’d decide how I felt based on the whole picture.
Generally speaking, I am with the majority here - no, I would not go to therapy with a Trump supporter, and I don’t think the question is illegitimate in 2020. I don’t care if they voted straight Republican ticket their whole adult life, and I’ll even cut them some slack if they voted for him in 2016. But their value system is too unlike mine for them to be helpful to me if they supported him in 2020.
It may also depend on whether the therapist in question is a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
Psychiatrists are medical doctors, and have full MD training plus fairly rigorous and fairly standardized psychiatric training. Part of that training is that they should never insert any of their personal selves into their sessions with clients. They generally won’t even tell you what movies they liked or not, let alone anything about their politics.
Psychologists, OTOH, are a much more varied group. There are whole bunches of schools of thought in psychology, many different theories and therapy styles. Their training is much more varied and (I think) less rigorous. Many of them are self-styled and do therapy in their own way. There are religious therapists who do god-based therapy; political therapists who do political-based therapy; “feminist” therapists who do feminist-oriented work, etc. I’ve gotten the impression that some of them get into the business because they have a bone to pick with the world.
FWIW in terms of providing therapy I would not consider MDs more rigorously trained at all. Oh once upon a time there were lots of rigorously trained as psychoanalysts, but not now. Most degreed therapists are not MDs (be they PhD or MSW or a variety of other options) and most psychiatrists spend little of their time providing therapy. Exceptions of course.
Yes there are different approaches. Some or many I can’t say. But the possible impact of transference issues is widely appreciated even by those who try to use such as part of a therapeutic alliance.
If someone is going to therapy at this time, I cannot see how their feelings about the last 4 years and ongoing election issues, and probably the fallout that will be with us for years will not be a part of what they feel that they need to discuss.
Part of the whole point of therapy is to talk about your feelings, and get validation in the ones that are useful, beneficial, and grounded in reality, and to get feedback to help to eliminate the ones that are not useful or based on the things in the world that actually affect you.
If the person that you share these concerns with simply writes off what you say as “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, then you are not going to get the therapy that you are looking for and need. If they are a Trump supporter, then it seems that a fair amount of what you would be wanting validation on, they would be dismissive about.
I don’t know that I would ask if they were Trump supporters, but if for any reason I believed them to be, I would not use them.
Sure, but prior to going into treatment, enquiring about a someone’s professional capabilities is not inappropriate. I’d see enquiring directly or indirectly about a therapist’s own mental state as no more inappropriate than asking about a surgeon’s complication rate. Given their job description, I wouldn’t go to a therapist who things the moon landings or COVID-19 are a hoax. And I think being a Trump supporter is quite literally in a similar category of delusion.
How you might discover this information is another matter. It’s certainly true that a potential therapist might not be willing to answer a direct question. But I don’t think it’s wrong to ask, or to see this as disqualifying if you obtain the information one way or another.
I agree with Dseid, this sort of question is a trap question. It could get a therapist doxxed if he/she gives the “wrong” answer. Nothing good can come of it; there’s a 50/50 chance that the therapist won’t give the answer the client wants to hear, and even if the therapist declines to answer, some people these days consider “no answer” to be the same as an ‘admission of guilt’ or they only want a therapist who is hardcore of the same beliefs as they.
I think it’s OK to ask a potential therapist if they’re a Trump supporter. The combination of the significance and depth and unpredictability of the content of a therapeutic relationship, together with the profound discordance between Trumpism and where I am (and I think many Dopers are), rise to the level of show stopping, for me.
I never knew my accountant’s politics, and never thought I cared. When she send a friend request on fb a few years ago I accepted and didn’t think much of it. Indeed I never even look at my facebook “wall” or “timeline” or whatever it’s called, mostly I just use Messenger and manage a local organization’s page. But then she started messaging me with all sorts of Trumpist ads and videos and whatnot, which are deranged to the point of being frightening. So I’m replacing her.
If it was easy and practical to conduct no business with any Trumpists, I would do so. It’s mostly not, but in cases where the Trumpism enters the relationship in some noticeable way, I’m probably generally going to terminate it. In good conscience I can’t be doing anything to fund or otherwise support that.
My BFF is a therapist and reports that these topics along with COVID make up about 80% of the work she’s doing right now and it’s been like this for months. FWIW, some of her clients ARE Trumpists and she has to walk a fine line with them for sure as she does not in any way share their views but has empathy for them as hurting people. She’s a much nicer person than I am, for sure, I don’t think I’d be able to assist them while maintaining therapeutic boundaries.
I came this close to starting this exact thread a few months ago. As noted, a lot of therapists aren’t really comfortable with personal questions about themselves, for good reason. There’s a tendency for them to want to be blank slates, so that the focus can be always on the patient and never on the therapist. That’s well and good as far as it goes, but some patients need to know a little more about who they’re spilling their guts to.
An approach that’s worked for me is to lay out in the initial session my strong feelings that Trump is a very bad guy, and that Trump supporters (including much of my own family) seem to want to take this country to a very bad place. As a member of a minority group that’s often hated by right-wing extremists, the issue’s extremely personal for me, and I absolutely need to have a level of trust that my therapist isn’t on the side of those pushing for right-wing authoritarian rule.
Statements like these have gotten two therapists to open up about their political leanings to me long enough to establish trust that they’re not a crazy Trumper, and then we can go from there. That’s all I need to hear – they don’t need to mention their personal feelings about politics ever again.
Not strictly on topic but I wanted to note that my ‘lady friend’ is a psychotherapist in the DC area. She is about as liberal as can be (and doesn’t hide it) yet many of her clients are overt Trump supporters (and some are even players in his reign). They don’t seem to be put off by her.
Also in my 50s. I think the gay community has solved this linguistic problem for us. I refer to the woman my brother lives with as his “partner”. Same for other unmarried couples.
Reputable health care providers are not going to be willing to disclose their political beliefs as a condition for providing treatment. They’d react similarly if a prospective patient called their office wanting to know if the doctor was a white Christian.