If you’ve not had therapy before, you may wonder exactly what it entails and what will be expected of you in your first session. Are there certain things you’ll have to talk about? What if gets uncomfortable? Are you going to be pushed to bare your soul immediately?
The good news is that, as a client in therapy, you pretty much can’t do anything wrong. The 50-minute session time is yours to use in whatever way feels most helpful. And if something doesn’t feel quite right for you, it is up to me as the therapist to help us explore together what might be happening between us and potentially also to make any necessary adjustments so that we can work together better.
There is no standardised way that the therapy develop, not least because we are all individuals with unique experiences and histories. The reasons that bring us into the counselling room also vary enormously. The most important tasks of the first session(s) is getting to know each other a little better and building the foundation for our work together.
That said, there are some typical tasks, which we may attend to during the early sessions. Hopefully, these will emerge naturally in a conversation between us rather than feeling like a kind of interrogation:
1) What brings you into therapy?
I’ll probably ask some variety of question about the reasons that have brought you to therapy. What are the types of issues that have brought you here? How does this manifest in your life? Often it can also be helpful to think about the ‘why now?’. What is it that feels different about your current circumstances that has led you to seek therapy at the moment?
2) Learning a little more about you
Especially when we’re in a crisis period, other aspects of our life can seem to fade into the background. It is also important for us to consider the broader context of the situation you currently find yourself in. This might include some exploration of your background, family dynamics, cultural and social issues, life history, friendships and relationships.
Remember that as the client, you always have ultimate control over the pace of the work, how wide and how deep you want to go, and how much of yourself and your experiences you wish to reveal, and when. Some aspects of yourself, especially if you’ve lived through traumatic experiences, may be extremely difficult to go into and feel potentially overwhelming. We need to respect that and go slowly with that material. There is no pressure to reveal anything to me right away — much better to take a bit of time to build up the trust between us and then enter into when you feel comfortable.
3) Expectations of therapy
We may also speak about what your expectations for therapy are. This includes questions like whether you’re looking for short-term or long-term counselling? What are you hoping to gain from the experience? What would an ideal outcome for you be? What might be some obstacles to full engagement in the therapeutic process? Do you like reading suggestions or ‘homework’ between sessions where these might be helpful, or is that not your thing?
If you don’t know any of this immediately, that is also fine. Often people come to therapy without any fixed ideas about this stuff, and so we’d start off working in a pretty flexible way to see what emerges in our sessions. If helpful, I can explain a little about how I tend to work and what I might anticipate the counselling between us may involve, based on what we’ve spoken about. In either case, it’s worth noting that our expectations and hopes for the process are also very likely to evolve as we continue through the therapy.
4) Support between sessions
If you feel like you’re arriving to therapy in a state of crisis, we will also likely spend some time talking about how you’ll look after yourself between our sessions. We might also begin to identify together the particular events or relationships, types of interactions etc which can prompt a spike in feelings of despair, loneliness or anxiety, and where you might turn to for support when this happens. If it feels like there is nowhere else to go, this can be illuminating in itself as it and we can start to explore why this may be happening.
5) Agreeing to work together for future sessions
During the course of our first session(s) we will begin the work of therapy, including by reaching a general agreement about what we’ll be doing together and how. Hopefully, this should help you feel comfortable with proceeding with our work together. However, if you somehow do not feel that we will be a good fit together, for whatever reason, it’s definitely worth discussing this me so that we can see why and/or exploring options with other therapists. I very much understand the important of feeling (potential for) a personal connection with your therapist to the ultimate ‘success’ of the counselling work, so you’ll definitely need to select a therapist who you think you can work with.
There may also be occasions where it emerges during our first sessions that I am not the right therapist for you particular circumstances. This would be, for example, in cases where more specialist support is required or where I do not have sufficient resources as a solo practitioner to support you in an ethical fashion. This is a rare occurrence and when it does happen I will seek to refer you to another colleague or service that is better suited to your needs.
….and that’s it!
The main task of the first therapy session is getting to know each other and to understand why you’re coming to therapy. For the most part, that means staying quiet and listening carefully to what you have to say about what is happening in your life. Even if it feels a little uncomfortable at first, or beforehand, clients often report that the first session goes very quickly and that 50 minutes have disappeared before they know it.
To see how it might be for you, please message me at pete@summertowntherapy.com and we can book you in for a first session.
