Your first session: What to expect from therapy

Are you coming to therapy for the first time? Congrats! I know that can be super nerve wracking, and it takes a lot of courage to take that first step.

Or maybe you’ve been to therapy before, but you’re considering trying some experiential therapy for the first time – like Somatic Experiencing or Internal Family systems. In that case, I’m super excited for you – it’s such transformational work!

Either way, I know it can feel daunting to come to therapy, or see a new therapist. There can be a lot of uncertainty about what it might feel like, or what’s expected of you:

·       Maybe you’re nervous about diving into your past or traumatic events (spoiler alert – you don’t have to explore any of that until you’re ready, and it might take a couple of sessions).

·       Maybe it feels uncomfortable to be truly seen and heard, and opening up to a stranger is weird!

·       Maybe you feel like you need to perform or answer all the questions ‘just right’

·       Maybe you’re feeling like you really need to fix something RIGHT NOW and there’s a lot of urgency to get to work in the first session. I get that.

All of these are totally normal and sometimes even naming them in the first session can help. I often like to take a moment in the first session to help you orient and settle in: take some time to notice your body as you get familiar with the space and with me, and notice and name any anxieties that are coming up.

Every first session will look and feel a little different – because every client (that’s you!) is unique. My aim in a first session is to learn more about you so that I can make sure our work together will be helpful for you. I want to get to know you as a person, not just a client. I want to learn about the way you connect with others, your hopes and goals, the things you love and that are important to you. I also want to know about the pain points – how you understand the issues that are bringing you to counselling, what you’ve already tried, and what would feel like little steps towards progress that we could explore right away. It can be really normal for emotions to come up around this – you don’t have to push them down in order to get through the story.

If your intention is to process trauma, and do somatic work in particular, we’ll likely spend more time in the first session exploring where things feel good, where there is ease and safety, what’s working for you in your body and life more broadly. We’ll focus on grounding and stability before we start exploring traumas. While the topic of your trauma and your experiences will likely come up, we don’t head right into it during a first session – we build up capacity to get there over time, to avoid retraumatizing you.

Not just talk therapy…

While there will always be talking involved, you might notice the work we do is less ‘talk therapy’ than you’re used to or expecting. If it feels appropriate, we might try out a somatic practice in the first session so you can feel something a little different – a baby step towards your goal. Somatic Experiencing is about tracking sensation and listening to the body, so you can start to be present to your own experience. Our intention is to slow things down so that all parts of you, and your nervous system, have a chance to catch up and process the things that might get lost when we rush through telling a story. If you’re nervous about slowing down and feeling what’s happening in your body, that’s ok! There’s no pressure, and we do little bits as it feels right for you.

If Internal Family Systems is a good fit for the work you want to do, we might try a little of that in the first session too. IFS isn’t traditional ‘talk therapy’ – it’s more like a guided visualization. And again, we try to move slowly so your brain and body really have a chance to experience something different.

My hope is that after the first session, you’ll be able to leave with at least one small practice to keep trying, or one new way of understanding your concern. The more in-depth therapeutic work happens once we have a connection that feels safe and good to you both consciously and unconsciously – and that takes a little time to build.

What will ongoing sessions look like?

We’re always keeping your overall goals in mind, AND so much can come up week to week. I check in with you at the start of each session to see what you need that day: you might have something pressing that you want to explore, or a sense of which ‘parts’ of you need attention. You might have noticed some small differences between sessions, or an example of the part/nervous system response that brought you to therapy, and we can use that as a starting point to explore more deeply. Your goals might change over time, or you may peel back a layer and find a new aspect of your experience that you want to explore. To mess with a metaphor: we’re always keeping the bigger forest in mind, while also taking the time to get curious about individual trees along the way.

Still have questions about what to expect in a first session? I’d love to hear from you at helen@helenbeynon.com