Your First Session, a Walkthrough

The most common thing people tell me in a first session is that they almost canceled it. Usually more than once. So let me remove some of the fog, because the unknown is doing more to keep people out of therapy than anything that actually happens inside it.

Before we meet, you will have filled out a short intake form — history, current concerns, logistics. I read it carefully, which means we do not have to spend your first hour on paperwork recital.

The session itself is fifty minutes and it is, honestly, a conversation. I will ask what brought you in now — not what is “wrong with you,” but what shifted recently that made this the moment. People are often surprised by their own answer. We will wander through the relevant history, but you set the pace. There is nothing you are required to disclose on a schedule.

Two things I am doing while we talk: listening for the pattern underneath the story you came in with, and paying attention to whether we work well together. You should be doing the second one too. Research is clear that the fit between client and therapist predicts outcomes better than any particular method. If the fit is not right, I will say so and help you find someone better matched — that is a good outcome, not a failure.

By the end, we will name a rough direction: what you want to be different in three months, and how we would notice. It will be revised. That is fine. First drafts are what first sessions are for.

You do not need to prepare anything. Come as you are; bring what you carry. That is the whole job.