Positive Qualities of Therapists You've Seen?

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I'm wondering what you liked about certain therapists either now or in the past, what qualities did they have that you really appreciated?

I always like it when a therapist has some Aspie traits

I have never seen a professional therapist I trusted. It is better to have a good friend who treats me like a person.

I like that my occupational therapist is not patronizing or playacting.

I like the ones that act like patients... they dress down, curse like sailors, and laugh with you (not at you) at your mistakes.

The first therapist I had seemed pretty good. I believe she was genuine and compassionate. Unfortunately she was pregnant when I first met her and only a few months later took her year maternity leave. By then, I was done with therapy.

The best experience I had was actually from a social worker that the ER doctor referred me to. She actually told it like it was: it was WRONG how you(I) were treated as a child just like it was wrong how I was treated as a biracial person. Wish I could find her and thank her: she made it clear that "normal" and "successful" people need therapy all the time.

Mine likes to draw diagrams, which I love.
He drew analogies using my special interests to explain things.
He also wasn't bothered when I was nonverbal and had to type to him on an iPad.
He had cool glasses too.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE my therapist... he agrees how I was labeled and treated was WRONG. So I can relate to GiantHockeyFan. He is open-minded but not in a way where his brains fall out.

My best therapist is a social worker in a mental health dept. She's retiring, and she tried to assure me that another social worker would not be abusive like the nurses here. I replied "Oh, yeah, no Dunning-Kruger in MY profession!" She had to laugh, and didn't really mind being corrected. We have always had a mutual-learning relationship; I like that people without a PhD are still allowed to say "I don't know." Mostly, she has been a good listener, motivating me to keep trying to explain my situation, and has given feedback on which trends are healthy in thinking. She also helps me interpret the local people, having had similar troubles over moving to a small town.
I would really prefer a male therapist who understands that people react to men with troubles differently than to women, and is able to do some analytical thinking, looking at the details of specific problems for clues.
I think that most therapists are hopeless at trying to diagnose a mixed condition. Even after Aspies made it to the DSM, nobody even mentioned it to me for a decade - I ran across the key by chance, while trying to explain our mother to my sister. This one did give me the usual wording of "Attachment Disorder" after I'd taken to describing one of my other patterns as "Romanian Orphan Syndrome."

The best therapist I ever saw was a psychiatrist for a surgery evaluation a few years ago. I only saw him twice, but traveled over four hours each way to do so. His best quality was to be incredibly disarming. I am highly mistrustful and defensive - I have had good reasons to assume everyone is out to screw me. He was able to get my defenses down before I even realized what he was doing, and seemed to do so effortlessly. He was so disarming that when I realized what he'd done, I wasn't even provoked into getting defensive again.
He was a laid back old hippie dude who understood diversity to a shocking degree. He understood people are not always going to tick all the boxes, they are not going to be the perfect caricature of Patient X taught in psych text books, but that does not invalidate their position.
He only needed to talk to me twice before he realized I knew what I was doing, and all that was needed from him was paperwork. He was grounded, down-to-earth and realistic. He helped me access some life-saving surgery when a supposedly specialist psychiatrist in my city was blocking and invalidating me every chance he got.
So he was a welcome contrast.

awesome, thanks for the replies! I liked that my therapist was not only not weirded out when I cried, but she encouraged me to. Feels good to get that stuff out sometimes. She was very positive and warm, encouraging and insightful. A lot of her wisdom came back to 'are you taking good care of your body,' which I still remind myself today.

I've been seeing my current therapist for over a year and she is very 'warm', compassionate, honest, and I get the sense she is genuinely a lovely person though obviously I don't know her outside the context of her being my therapist. We seem to be a very good fit as a therapist-client relationship and she is helping me with a lot of my issues. She's a consultant clinical psychologist and is head of her department as well as trained in ASDs so knows her stuff so to speak. I totally have a bit of a 'crush' It happens.

Probably the best thing my therapist does is to work free overtime when someone has a crisis. She does good work despite the system, not because of it. She's on "vacation" now - catching up on the stupid paperwork for her know-nothing supervisors.

My therapist was very open minded and not opposed to any diagnosis, whatever that might be. When we sought help for our failing marriage, I was undiagnosed. When I was able to learn what the therapist was teaching but not able to implement it in my daily life she was puzzled at first. But then she took a step back and looked at me as a whole. The inablity to make eye contact, very intense and limited interests, major issues with socializing and a total missunderstanding of relationships. She told me I might have Asperger's and proceded to have me take several tests, which once scored showed that I was most definatly Aspie. Initialy I was diagnosed with Asperger's, which was shifted to ASD level 2 as that change happened whilst I was still seeing her. She was very kind and understanding, not dismissive of anything I told her, factoring in everything I could remember about my childhood and struggles as a teen. She was an awsome therapist and I really enjoyed working with her in learning how to better cope with who I am. Mike