You have decided to try individual psychotherapy and this is going to be your firs session? For sure you are wondering what you can expect from it?. Maybe you are apprehensive and feel slightly stressed. Perhaps you feel doubtful if your problem is “suitable” for psychotherapy and if it can be helped.
Initial questions
After you to sit down in my office, I will enquire what your problem is. I understand that you already find the situation difficult, so I am not going to inetrrupt. I am simply interested to hear from you what kind of difficulty you are facing. It is significant how you are experiencing your difficulty and why this is a problem for you. These are important questions and everybody has their own answers. Also I am interested why you have decided to come right now, what is the immediate cause of your coming?
Basic information
Moreover, I am going to ask you generally about your life situation. Also I will be interested to learn something about your medical history, including any counselling you have had. All this information helps me to set a safe framework for our work together, by assessing the level of support you have outside my practice room, but also pointing to the possible difficult areas. Well, probably you will agree this is quite a lot for a first meeting, right? Besides, I will inform you about the rules concerning cancelling sessions, contacting each other and ending therapy. If you want I can briefly tell you how I work and what is important for me in my work as a psychotherapist.
Choosing the direction
Our successive sessions will be more focused on your presenting problem and it will be crucial to turn your problem into an achievable goal. So, instead of saying “I do not want to…” we will try to determine what you actually want. It sounds easy but usually it is quite difficult and it serves to choose the direction of our work. Also we need to remember about secondary gains – maybe you get some profits from the otherwise difficult situation. This initial stage of the therapy is very important, it is like a foundation on which we can build.
If you find this text has clarified things for you and encouraged you to contact me I am very happy and invite you to come to my practice.