What Happens In My First Therapy Session?

So you have had a consultation call, decided on a weekly time for us to meet, and completed your consent forms. The hour is rolling closer for your first session and you feel the nerves creeping in. What will our first hour together look like? 

First, you will be met with a warm welcome! I am so glad you are in this shared space with me and grateful for pushing yourself to step into this therapy journey– it is a brave step to take! We will take some time to introduce the names that we go by and the pronouns we use so that we know how one another likes to be addressed. Then, I will set the frame for therapy. 

What is a frame you might ask? The frame is the boundaries of the therapeutic relationship that help us keep our relationship therapeutic. The frame includes details like: how long our sessions are, our meeting frequency, cancellation policy, communication policy, and confidentiality. In this time, I will give you space to ask any logistical questions that have come up about what our time together will look like. 

You have probably heard from others who have experienced yourself that first therapy sessions can feel overwhelming. Therapists often ask a flurry of questions about your work, your family, your friends, your mental health history. All in an effort to get a full history. Because I work from a trauma informed lens (which you can read more about here), I take a different approach. Rather than asking you to expose so much of your story in our first meeting together, we will take it slow, doing our intake over several sessions as we hit on all those important history questions. We can weave these questions into the exploration of what you are bringing to therapy so that the intake process feels less draining and more focused on relationship building between client and therapist. 

With this approach in mind, I will guide the start to our session by asking you to tell me a bit about what brings you to therapy. Now, I know this was likely something we touched on in the consultation call and you may be thinking “I already told you that.” You are right. You did. And yet, I am going to ask you to share again, in more detail this time, what is bringing you to this space with me. This time, opposed to our consultation call, I will ask questions to begin exploring deeper about what is bringing you to therapy. We will use this exploration together to start to identify some goals for your treatment. We can work together to find language that fits right for you and articulate both long term and short term changes you wish to come from therapy. It is our job to do this together. So, no pressure to come in with all your goals figured out. We will find a starting place and a way forward together. 

As our session begins to draw to a close, we will devote time to reflecting on your experience today. What was it like to walk into the therapy space today? How did you feel at the top of the session compared to the end? What did you notice about yourself as you talked today? This time to reflect on your here-and-now experience is critical as it is one of the first moments for us to practice talking about what is happening in the room between us. This practice of examining our relationship in real time will become a regular part of our sessions as we continue our work together. 

And that is the outline of your first therapy session. However you show up on day one you are welcome in my space and we will work together to meet you where you are and connect the dots on your goals. If this kind of therapy experience resonates with you, or if you have more questions, I invite you to reach out via the contact form on my website so we can talk more!