The first session

As a client and as a therapist, I’m not a huge fan of first sessions. Everyone has their own way of working, leaving little assurance of how that first session will go. Even as a therapist, I can come into a session with the clearest outline of questions and intentions, but it’s my job to pivot when the client needs it to look a different way. So, before each session, I actively engage in detachment exercises in which I release my expectations and let myself fall freely into the therapeutic relationship, placing my technical knowledge aside and only picking it back up after the session.

With literally hundreds of models and theories on how the mind works and the science of human change, it would be impossible to hold all that clinical knowledge in mind whilst navigating a new encounter. Not only that, but multitasking is a myth, and I would be doing my clients a disservice if I prioritised analysing or conceptualising them above connecting with them.

Therefore, in early sessions I will always prioritise the simple act of getting to know one another. If we skip this step, we could be five sessions in before we realise we’re not a good fit. I don’t have any interest in you wasting your money and, more importantly, your time and energy, on a therapy that won't work, and if we don’t connect, it won’t work.

What does an initial session with me look like?

Hopefully on foot, somewhere in nature, my go-to first question is simply “where would you like to start?” Yes, it’s helpful to get your history; yes, I want to know why specifically now? But the very first thing we need online is collaboration. By asking you where you want to start, I get what’s most alive for you right there in that moment. And hopefully you receive the signal that this is your therapy, your hour. I want to know what’s most important to you at that time.

We’ll get to the historic data (or not) but it’s not going to matter what your Mum told you that has stayed with you all these years if we don’t first give space to what is most alive for you at the time of reaching out. And! I don’t want you to have to rehash a painful childhood story to the five therapists you tested out before finding the one that fits! So tell me your present; if it’s your history that’s present, that’s cool too 😊 

By the end of a first session, I hope to have identified:

• If we want to move forward together in a collaborative therapeutic alliance.

• Are there any needs here that I can’t meet and if so, who do I know that I can refer.

• What will our work together look like, am I leading and guiding? Holding space for grief? Or are we working together as a team to identify the path for you to get the most out of life?

That’s it, that’s a first session. It’s a meeting of minds and hopefully of hearts.

If you’re looking for someone to take copious notes with which they will paint you a neat little picture of why you are the way you are, you have my blessing to back away slowly now.

Humans are, by definition, not pretty pictures. We are messy interwoven complexity at its peak. If you’re brave enough to accept the reality of that ambiguity, then I’ll gladly walk beside you as we attempt to make sense of our existence, but ultimately it will be in the immeasurable power of relationship that we help you steer your life in a desirable direction. And it’s more fun with company. Sorry not sorry.