The world of therapy has become partly a market today: instead of a peaceful healing center for the soul - stalls for the soul. All you need is branding, an exciting life story and a high dose of self-confidence - and you already sound like a psychologist from TV. Rabbi Avraham Menachem Eisenbach, founder of the 'Migdalor Center for Education and Soul', in a sharp column about what is happening in the world of therapy - and why it is mandatory to consult beforehand.
In a reformed world, 'therapist' would be a title earned after years of study, experience, professional supervision, and rigorous personality testing. Anyone who takes on the soul of a child, teenager, or a falling couple would go through a similar path to a doctor: studies, internships, specializations, and a committee that could also disqualify them for lack of maturity, stability, or integrity.
In today's real world, sometimes it's enough to take an online workshop, print a color certificate on a home printer, open a story with moving music - and voila: "trauma expert", "emotional liberation master", "deep process facilitator".
The world of therapy has become partly a "market" instead of a peaceful healing home for the soul - stalls at the besta: each with their own "method," their own "model," the "approach" they invented last week.
All you need is branding, a logo, a slogan, an exciting life story and a high dose of self-confidence - and that already sounds like a psychologist from TV. Someone who has actually lost sleep at night because of patients, sat countless hours in training, studied articles, played on the front line - sometimes seems less shiny than the new star who rose on TikTok with polished empowerment phrases.
And here's the tragedy: the public doesn't really know how to distinguish and make a distinction. From the perspective of the average client, both this and that are "emotional therapists.".
Who knows what the difference is between a few-week evening course and a degree, training, guidance, and supervision? Both post, both have a 'clinic', all have success stories like: "A patient came to me devastated, after two sessions - a new life." But who will check what really happened? Who will check what the cost was along the way?
It must be said bluntly: a person's soul is not experimented with. An adolescent child dealing with anxiety, a teenager wandering the border between a framework and the street, a couple on the edge - these are not characters in a training course. Unprofessional treatment is not only not always helpful; it may close doors.
A teenager who experiences superficial or abusive treatment learns a dangerous conclusion: "I'm hopeless," or "everyone is a charlatan." Parents who fall for a "therapist" who doesn't understand systems may lose precious years along the way, sometimes until the picture is already many times more complex and painful.
And with all this, the pressure on the ground is only increasing. The advertisements scream: "Don't wait," "Come now," "Life is too short to suffer." The sentences are true - but who checks where exactly we are going? After all, there is hardly any other field that we would enter with such closed eyes. We would not enter heart surgery just because someone posted an exciting post about "changing lives." But why in the soul - are we ready?
And this is where the critical importance of consultation comes in before starting treatment.
Just as you don't buy an apartment without an appraiser, and you don't sign a contract without an attorney, you don't enter a treatment path without first speaking with a professional and objective person - someone who has no interest in selling themselves, but rather in truly understanding what is right in this specific case.
What does such preliminary consultation actually do?
1. Sorting and diagnosing direction - before an attack
Counseling is not "treatment," but a kind of watchtower. We zoom out: Who is the person? How old is he? What is the history? Is it a specific difficulty - or a life pattern? Is the root emotional, educational, marital, family, environmental? Maybe we should even start working with the parents or with the yeshiva, before the child enters individual therapy?
There are problems that are suitable for a few focused counseling sessions; there are situations that require deep emotional therapy; there are cases where the problem is structural - an inappropriate framework, academic pressure, ongoing family conflict. Without proper triage, a teenager is sometimes sent for intensive emotional therapy - when in fact all that is needed is a change of framework, reduction of pressure, and proper guidance for the parents.
2. Huge savings in time, money and pain
People come to the treatment process desperate, willing to pay almost any amount to “have peace at home.” Sometimes they throw away tens of thousands of shekels on inappropriate treatment or on a one-dimensional therapist who understands only one type of difficulty - and everyone else is forced into a familiar mold. Preliminary counseling can save all of this: you get a map, direction, and priorities.
Instead of getting lost among names, recommendations, ads, and methods, sit down for one or two conversations with someone who knows the area: what treatments exist, what the difference is between an educational psychologist, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, coach, family counselor, occupational therapist, didactic diagnostician, and more. After that, the choice is much more precise - and less based on external impressions.
3. Protecting the patient – coordinating expectations and maintaining boundaries
The person who comes to therapy arrives vulnerable. He doesn't know what the therapist is "allowed", what is considered professional, what is a 'red flag'. Here, preliminary counseling can give him the rules of the game:
Rabbi Avraham Menachem Eisenbach. Photo: Courtesy
What does a good therapist ask at the beginning of a process? What does building a therapeutic alliance look like? What is the reasonable pace of progress? When is it mandatory to ask questions? When is it his full right to change therapists? And what behaviors - even if they are wrapped in lots of nice words - are crossing a professional boundary?
Some people experience treatment that is too intrusive, judgmental, or even dependent - and don't know that it doesn't have to be that way. They think: "I must be the problem." Preliminary counseling gives them binoculars: this is what healthy treatment looks like. Everything else - a sign that you need to stop and check.
4. Adapting the method to the patient – and not the other way around
One of the problems with the "therapy market" is that everyone sells what they know. Those who have studied CBT will see CBT everywhere; those who have studied NLP will see NLP in every soul; those who have studied "emotional liberation" will release even when boundaries are needed, not liberation.
But the reality is more complex. Some patients are suited to a brief cognitive approach; some need more experiential and physical work; some need a stable, authoritative figure by their side; and some are suffocated by authority and need a softer approach.
In an early consultation, you can ask: What is his personality type? What is his emotional capacity? How many strengths are there at home right now? How cooperative is he? This is no longer a theoretical question – but a key to choosing a method that suits the person, and not just the therapist's marketing.
5. A systemic perspective – don’t get stuck on just one detail.
Especially when it comes to children and youth, it is a serious mistake to "engineer" only the child. The child is sent for treatment, marked as a problem - when the entire system is screaming. Sometimes the parents themselves need guidance. Sometimes you need to work with the educational team. Sometimes it is worth changing the framework, sometimes strengthening the existing framework instead of returning the child home each time as a tragic hero.
Professional and objective counseling knows how to ask: Aren't we making "emotional compensation" here instead of real change on the ground? Isn't the child becoming a scapegoat for a tired system? Instead of running straight to "emotional therapy," someone needs to be responsible for the entire map.
And this is where diagnostic centers come into the picture - which do not operate as a clinic of one therapist, but as a complete system that sees all directions. This is no longer a "therapist who advertises himself," but an address that knows dozens of therapists, fields, methods, frameworks and treatment factors, and can put together a broad picture.
In practice, what happens in such consultation?
1. Initial in-depth conversation - Not just "what hurts," but also who is involved, what has been done to date, what is the degree of urgency, and what is the level of danger (if any).
2. Clarification of goals - What do you expect from the treatment? Improving functioning? Reducing anxiety? Preventing deterioration? Returning a child to the setting? Defining the goal prevents illusions.
3. Route selection - Sometimes individual emotional therapy will be recommended, sometimes parental guidance, family mediation, a change in educational framework, or a combination of several things together.
4. Basic support within the process - Not just "go and get it done," but the ability to go back, update, check if the direction is working, and if necessary, change.
In a therapeutic world that has become partly a brand circus, our responsibility is to restore sanity. Not everyone who speaks beautifully, uploads an exciting video, and quotes sentences from psychology is the right person to entrust the soul of a child or the future of a relationship to.
Behind every certificate, method, or "success story," one must ask: Who supervises? Who guides you? How many years have you been in the field? How do you deal with extreme situations? Do you also know how to say "It's too much for me" and move on?
Consulting before treatment is not a whim of professionals who want "one more step." It is the seat belt of someone who understands how delicate the soul is and how easy it is to hurt it again.
Anyone who has seen souls burned by improper treatment knows: Sometimes the most responsible thing we can do for ourselves and for our children is not to run to the first treatment we find on Google, but to stop. Talk to a professional, find out, ask hard questions, and only then choose who we give the key to the most sensitive places in our hearts.
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