Your Custom Text Here
Just leaving a quick note here to let you know that my counselling practice in Basingstoke will be pausing over Christmas and New Year, so there will be no appointments between 23rd December and 2nd January.
I’ll respond to new enquiries received during the break by Friday 6th January. Unfortunately I have no availability before Christmas but please do get in touch about the possibility of starting counselling in the New Year.
Season’s Greetings.
Andy
People often wonder what their first counselling session will be like, especially when they’ve not seen a counsellor before. The first time we try anything new, it can be tricky. We might feel a range of emotions, from anxiety to excitement to curiosity. Just writing this first blog post, I feel a bit nervous about whether it will be helpful to read. But when the new thing is speaking to a counsellor for the first time, then the stakes can feel even higher.
This short post is about what to expect at your first counselling appointment. Not the practical details around it, which we can discuss when you get in touch, or confidentiality and privacy, which you can read more about here, but what actually happens in the session itself. After reading it, you might still have all sorts of feelings about coming to an initial session, but hopefully you’ll have a clearer idea of what you are walking into.
The first thing to say is that I won’t be formally assessing or diagnosing you. Some counsellors do call the initial appointment an ‘assessment’, but I prefer to use the slightly clumsy phrase ‘exploratory session’ for our first meeting.
This is because the type of counselling I practice is not like seeing a doctor or car mechanic, where you describe your problem, then they diagnose the fault (with your body or car!) and tell you how it will be fixed. Counselling is more of a collaborative dialogue than a treatment.
To put it another way, counselling is a deeply supportive and focused kind of conversation that helps you explore your concerns in more depth than usually happens in everyday life; not by giving you solutions or cures but by helping you to look more closely at what really matters so that together we can begin to find a way forward.
Compared with conversations with friends, family or colleagues, there will be lots of space. I won’t be talking about myself or my life and I won’t usually be advising you what to do. I also won’t be telling you what you should (or should not) discuss, although I may respond more to things that seem important to you in some way. I do tend to ask more questions in our first meeting than in later sessions, just to get an initial understanding of you and your situation. And if you are really unsure what to say, then I will do my best to help you get started.
In some ways, the first appointment is like any other session. There are no questionnaires, diagnostic tests or specific activities. We will simply spend the time discussing whatever is troubling you. I’ll be listening closely, concentrating on trying to understand what you are saying and checking out whether my understanding fits with your experience.
We will also talk about what you might like to get from counselling and then, at the end of the session, we can decide together whether it would be valuable for you to continue. If you decide to arrange another session, we can discuss practical details like appointment times and frequency.
This is hard to predict because everyone is different. For some, counselling can feel a little awkward at first, but it usually gets easier as the session progresses or becomes more comfortable after a session or two. Other people find it an immediate relief to finally talk about their concerns or enjoy having the space to explore things. It can even be refreshing or energising. Having said that, looking closely at things that are distressing can also be emotionally challenging, even when doing so feels necessary, useful or valuable in some way.
Whatever you’re feeling about the first session, we’ll make time to talk about that too. Discussing how counselling is going can be important, particularly when you are deciding whether I am the right counsellor for you. And if you decide not to continue, then I will fully respect that decision – there’s no pressure to arrange another appointment.
I hope this gives a flavour or what your first counselling session might be like. If you have any questions, do get in touch. And if you are looking for an experienced counsellor in Basingstoke, check out the rest of the site for more details.