What To Expect From Your First Therapy Session
The hardest part of therapy often is stepping through the door for your first appointment. Therapy can feel intimidating and mysterious, especially if it’s your first time seeking services. In this article, we’ll go over your first session from start to finish so you can know what to expect and hopefully, feel more confident stepping through that office door.
The first thing to consider about starting therapy is paperwork. Exciting, right? Almost all therapists will ask you to fill out some paperwork before your session, either online via a client portal or in-person. The purpose of this paperwork isn’t to exhaust you with tasks or make you uncomfortable with personal questions, rather, therapists need to gather some background information before your appointment in order to be able to focus on getting to know you rather than interviewing you. Insurance companies require therapists to gather an enormous amount of information about their clients within just one session, so if therapists didn’t conduct some of this information gathering beforehand, the first session would likely feel like a rapid-fire interview to get all those questions answered. Completing this paperwork beforehand frees up both you and your therapist to focus on building your relationship in a natural, conversational way.
The therapists’ goal for the first session is to get a broad picture of you from a biological, psychological, and social perspective. This means that your therapist will ask you about things like your medical and mental health history as well as your main relationships, environment, and interests. All three of these perspectives are needed to truly understand why a person might be experiencing mental health struggles, and what diagnosis might be correct. A good therapist will be able to ask these questions in a natural way - it’s a conversation, not an interrogation. After your first session, your therapist will begin to theorize about your case and design a treatment plan designed to help you reach your goals based on the information you provide during your first session. That’s why it’s important to be truthful on your paperwork and in your first session, because your therapist can only treat an issue that they know about.
Beyond diagnosing and beginning to plan a course of treatment, the other main goal of the first session is to give both therapist and client a chance to feel each other out. Therapy is an intimate, often scary, endeavor, and clients are rightfully feeling out whether or not they feel like they can trust their therapist. On the flipside, therapists are feeling out their client for what kind of approach they prefer and whether or not the client’s presenting issues are within their wheelhouse. If a therapist feels like they don’t have adequate training, experience, or time in their caseload to treat a client, the ethical thing to do is refer them to another, better qualified provider after the first session. The first few sessions can be a dance, the therapist and client both circling each other, getting closer and gaining trust until enough rapport is built that the real work will begin. This process of relationship building takes time, and that’s okay!
We hope this guide helped ease some uncertainties about the first session in your therapy journey. Here at AWC, we are more than happy to answer any more questions you may have about the first session, paperwork, and beyond - we’re available 24/7 through email and during business hours by phone at (248) 413 - 5865.
