Having an educated, knowledgeable and experienced psychotherapist is critical to helping someone through the difficulties they are experiencing. With that being assumed, is it more important that you like and feel connected to your therapist or that he/she is the most skilled in the modalities that he/she practices?
I think psychotherapy is like many other relationships that people seek out for a service, such as a doctor, financial planner, hair stylist, attorney, child care taker, etc. When you meet someone, you know quickly if you like them. Once that is determined, you will either see them again being open to building a relationship or not. Naturally, people are willing to trust, believe, follow through and receive information from someone that they think they like even if they really don’t know them. Simply thinking that you like someone opens the door for all the work that can follow.
I don’t think you can try to like someone or try to trust them; it’s something that happens instantaneously with the energy that one puts out into the universe. Now you may like someone initially and then through time and experience change your mind, but I don’t think it happens the other way around. Can you learn to like someone who you need to trust or become vulnerable to? Learning to like someone is different than actually liking someone.
Building a therapeutic relationship that feels safe and free of judgement is the only way to get down to the core issues that surface to cause us problems. Knowing you can say whatever comes to mind reduces the fear that it might be wrong or unacceptable. This helps to get someone to be their true authentic self which either is working for them or they need assistance in changing.
If you feel guarded or cautious in what you say to your therapist, you may go round in circles with the issues you are experiencing; you don’t really feel what you believe will be received well or accepted. Once that is eliminated, you can get down to what is actually happening, how you really feel, what your core beliefs are, and what needs working on. Nothing will make the truth come to the surface if you don’t genuinely like someone and want to trust and build a relationship.
I guess the simple truth is no modality of therapy can overpower the importance of liking your psychotherapist. The power of relationship supersedes everything else that matters in the therapy process.