Start with your gym. Ask them if they have any recs. Post on local forums asking for recs.
FWIW, I have many of the same things as you -- fat, metabolism fuckedupness, mental health problems, weird learning style -- and I found two excellent trainers at Fitness First (in Sydney and Melbourne respectively) so it's not too hard.
My magic words were "functional fitness". Tell them that's what you want, and ask them to hook you up with a trainer who does that. They may eyebrow at you and say, "what do you mean by that?" Tell them your macro-goals, and tell them the sort of exercise you like doing. For me, I usually say "I love lifting heavy things, and I like it low tech... how big is your heaviest medicine ball?" "Medicine ball" is basically a shibboleth for the kind of trainer I like (and suspect you might like too) -- people who are into that tend to be the sort of people I want to deal with.
Wrt the mental health stuff... it's the hardest thing I've found. I *hate* bursting into tears on my trainer so much, and it's pretty impossible to find someone who actually would have proper qualifications to deal with that. The best I've managed is to be as up-front as possible and tell them as much as I can about what's going on in my head, and remind myself that they probably have clients burst into tears on them all the damn time. FWIW I've never seen a trainer who didn't have a handy stash of kleenex somewhere.
Something that might be non-obvious, but I think would work well for you maybe... I have always had male trainers and really liked working with them. That seems anti-intuitive in a way (I usually prefer women for other health stuff, eg. my dentist and everything) but actually it worked well because they tend to be better about real weight-lifting, more likely to work with people who have fitness goals rather than appearance goals, etc. The one funny incident was my 2nd trainer, who I don't think had worked with butch women before? He used to apologise to me if the pullup bar was rough (um, that's for friction! it's meant to be like that!) until I told him that I was in favour of building calluses. Or one time I missed a catch and got smacked in the face with a medicine ball and you could see he was all D: D: D: and convinced I'd freak out and I laughed and said, "It's just a fat lip, I'll tell people I was in a fight." ... anyway eventually he got used to me and stopped apologising if I broke a nail or something ;) He was a good trainer, incredibly form-obsessed. He worked out of Victoria Gardens Fitness First. I might be able to dig up his details if you wanted.
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FWIW, I have many of the same things as you -- fat, metabolism fuckedupness, mental health problems, weird learning style -- and I found two excellent trainers at Fitness First (in Sydney and Melbourne respectively) so it's not too hard.
My magic words were "functional fitness". Tell them that's what you want, and ask them to hook you up with a trainer who does that. They may eyebrow at you and say, "what do you mean by that?" Tell them your macro-goals, and tell them the sort of exercise you like doing. For me, I usually say "I love lifting heavy things, and I like it low tech... how big is your heaviest medicine ball?" "Medicine ball" is basically a shibboleth for the kind of trainer I like (and suspect you might like too) -- people who are into that tend to be the sort of people I want to deal with.
Wrt the mental health stuff... it's the hardest thing I've found. I *hate* bursting into tears on my trainer so much, and it's pretty impossible to find someone who actually would have proper qualifications to deal with that. The best I've managed is to be as up-front as possible and tell them as much as I can about what's going on in my head, and remind myself that they probably have clients burst into tears on them all the damn time. FWIW I've never seen a trainer who didn't have a handy stash of kleenex somewhere.
Something that might be non-obvious, but I think would work well for you maybe... I have always had male trainers and really liked working with them. That seems anti-intuitive in a way (I usually prefer women for other health stuff, eg. my dentist and everything) but actually it worked well because they tend to be better about real weight-lifting, more likely to work with people who have fitness goals rather than appearance goals, etc. The one funny incident was my 2nd trainer, who I don't think had worked with butch women before? He used to apologise to me if the pullup bar was rough (um, that's for friction! it's meant to be like that!) until I told him that I was in favour of building calluses. Or one time I missed a catch and got smacked in the face with a medicine ball and you could see he was all D: D: D: and convinced I'd freak out and I laughed and said, "It's just a fat lip, I'll tell people I was in a fight." ... anyway eventually he got used to me and stopped apologising if I broke a nail or something ;) He was a good trainer, incredibly form-obsessed. He worked out of Victoria Gardens Fitness First. I might be able to dig up his details if you wanted.