What to expect in your first counselling session

You're contemplating starting therapy, or have booked a session already, which means you might be experiencing a plethora of emotions from excited to nervous and everything in between.

Some of those feelings might come from a sense of trepidation in terms of not knowing what to expect – and you won’t be alone in feeling them – especially if you’ve never experienced counselling before. Even if you have had counselling in the past, all therapists work differently, depending on their modality (the type of therapy they’re trained in), their personality and their ways of working.

My training was in person-centred counselling but I also spent a year studying and understanding the theories and practices of psychodynamic therapy, which has its roots in the work of early practitioners of psychology and psychiatry, including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Psychodynamic therapy means taking a more psychoanalytic approach. It covers early attachments including relationships with your family and parents. I’ll explain a bit more about this in the first session, or we might have covered it beforehand in an intro call.

What happens in session one

It's fair to say that the first counselling session is a little bit different from subsequent sessions. We start with introductions and getting to know a little bit about you and what brings you to therapy. I’m a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (often called the BACP, for short) and follow their ethical framework (or guidelines) for working with a client. This means I take the time to engage in contracting before therapeutic work starts, which in practice means going over the Counselling Contract, which will be emailed to you in advance. Please take time to read about payment and cancellation terms so you fully understand how we work and there are no ‘grey areas’ – again, any queries on this, bring them to the first session or email me in advance and I’ll be happy to explain further.

Contracting
The Contract isn’t just a piece of admin to be rushed through: it forms the basis of the work and covers really important areas such as confidentiality and limits to that. Even if everything in the Contract makes sense and you don’t have any queries, I’ll take some time to explain confidentiality in full so you understand what this means for you and the work we do together.

The Assessment phase
After we’ve gone over the Contract, I’ll do an assessment. This involves asking a series of set questions to get a sense of you, and the issues you’re bringing to therapy. In a nutshell, the first session involves me doing more talking than in subsequent sessions. It can feel a little formal as there’s a lot to pack in, but it’s important that we start off on the right foot, with no assumptions made.

Setting aims and objectives
Understanding what it is that you wish to achieve in therapy sessions is really important so that we don't waste your time and money. You might not have a really clear sense of this in session one, and that's OK - we can work through it together. And whatever we land on, be aware that sometimes this changes after the work starts, so I'll do regular check-ins with you over the course of our sessions to make sure that we're on track.

Empowering you
Remember, this first session is also your opportunity to decide whether you think we can work together. If you feel after session one that I’m not the therapist for you, that’s totally OK. Do let me know, and if possible/relevant, I can signpost you on to alternative sources of support.

A good therapeutic relationship is built on trust – and studies show that for positive outcomes to be achieved, the relationship itself needs to be the foundation of the work, so it’s important that you feel safe, supported and comfortable in the counselling space.