What should I expect from mental health counseling or psychotherapy?

One of the first questions I ask potential clients during a phone consultation is whether this is their first time in counseling. There is uncertainty in doing anything new for the first time. I had many different mental images of what therapy would look like before my first session. Imagine all the times you have seen therapy portrayed in television, movies, and other media. The stories you have been told from friends or family that have gone to therapy and relayed their experience to you. The messages you have received, both positive and negative, when growing up about therapy. These images, stories, and messages you have heard will all influence your script about what therapy might look like for yourself. You get to decide and have some control over what therapy will look like for you.

I picture the therapist from The Sopranos sitting in her chair listening to Tony Soprano talk about his regrets and panic attacks from running a mob. Matt Damon going through multiple bad experiences in therapy before finding Robin William’s character in Good Will Hunting. The classic image of Sigmund Freud sitting over a patient as they lay horizontally and talk about whatever comes to their mind. These and other impressions of therapy may come to your head as well before you make your first appointment.

The initial phone or email consultation is a way to pull into reality what counseling will actually look like for you. The feelings of anxiety about counseling will likely decrease as we begin to make it clear what therapy can actually look like for you and how you get to use therapy to reach your goals. I use the initial intake session as a way to inform you about what to expect from therapy, using a document called “informed consent” and by reviewing document about “practice policies.” This is a way that I let you know the rules, boundaries, and expectations for how I practice therapy, that are aligned with what is in the law and code of ethics governing counseling.

Part of the expectations for therapy are created by law and ethics that should be standard for all mental health counselors. You have a right to have a therapist that is following the law and is ethical. I follow the General Rules outlined for Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC) from the State of Tennessee and the ethical code from the American Counseling Association (ACA). Within those laws and ethics, I practice counseling in my own unique way that is authentic to who I am using research and theories that lead to what I believe works in counseling. I cannot guarantee results in counseling, however, in my strengths-focus I try to use what works most of the time as much as I can.

In the phone consultation and initial intake session I ask about what you expect from counseling in order for us to move towards your goals and make sure that we are the best fit to meet those goals. I also have you complete an initial screener so that we can both better understand what brings you to therapy. That question about your past experiences with counseling helps me gain a baseline for what you are expecting. I ask about what brings you to therapy and what your goals are for therapy. That way we can work together within the structure of therapy to help meet your goals.

If a client tells me they have past experiences with counseling either in individual, couples, or family counseling, it allows me to assess what worked and did not work in their past experience. If you had a negative or positive experience in therapy before, I want to know, so that we can do more of what worked and understand what did not work. I practice counseling from a strengths-basis, which means that as soon as we find something that works or recognize something that worked in the past, we try doing more of it.

Reach out today and send an email or a leave a voicemail and we can have an initial phone consultation. The phone consultation is generally about 15 minutes to make sure we would be a good fit and to see if there are any better resources out there if we are not a good fit. The initial session after this phone call is called an intake session. The intake session is generally about 5 minutes of reviewing the informed consent and practice policies, and then about 45 minutes of reviewing the screener you completed before the session to clarify the reason you came to counseling and what you want to get out of counseling. I am also available if you want to contact me to ask any questions you may have about individual or couples counseling.

I will not be the therapist with a notepad taking notes while you lay on the couch or Robin Williams trying to shake sense into you while feeding the birds and talking about Boston. What I hope to provide in your counseling experience is someone that listens to you and understands, someone that feels safe to be vulnerable around, and someone that can sit beside you as you go through growth and change, when you feel stuck, or are experiencing pain. The relationship in therapy is both professional and personal, and I hope that it will be a strong one.