What will the therapeutic process feel and look like?
How the process feels is an interesting question. Your therapy will be as individual as you are. Counselling should feel different from having a chat with the people that you may be able to confide in as you go about your everyday life. When we speak to family members and friends, there can be, for different reasons, limitations to the extent that we can talk about things that are troubling us. As a counsellor I have been trained to listen empathically.
When clients first make contact with me I am often asked: “Do you have experience working with…?” Whilst I have experience working with a variety of issues, I should let you know that the way in which I have been trained goes beyond labels such as ‘gay,’ ‘alcoholic,’ ‘ADHD;’ I work with my clients in a holistic way and I will be more concerned with your relationship with a diagnosis or label which you may have given yourself or have been given by others.
The therapeutic process will sit within a framework which I have outlined below in terms of how it will look:
The First Session
When I meet with you for the first time I will usually begin by asking you some questions about yourself. This can be helpful as sometimes it is difficult to know where to begin. At this early stage the first session can help you to decide if you think that I am the right counsellor for you. At the same time it can help me to understand what is going on for you that has brought you to counselling at this point in your life.
During this session, I will ask you what your goals for your therapy are so that I can understand what the outcomes are that you are hoping to achieve.
You are under no obligation to see me again. It is important that you feel comfortable and although it can take a few sessions to feel comfortable with the process especially if you have never had counselling before, you will hopefully have a sense of whether I am the right counsellor for you after our first meeting.
The subsequent sessions
From the 2nd week of our work together, it is you who will be setting the agenda of the sessions. It can take a bit of time to get used to this as you may not have had experience of having the full attention of someone whose role it is to listen to what you are struggling with and whose sole purpose is to assist you. I will trust that you will have a sense of the direction in which you need the work to go in and I will be understanding the situation which is causing you challenge from your perspective.
I would encourage a review of our work on the 6th session and the purpose of this is for the both of us to have the opportunity to reflect on the sessions so far. I will encourage you to let me know if there is anything that stands out to you as being particularly effective in our work so far and anything that was not particularly helpful. At this point I would usually suggest that we take a look at what your original goals were and to establish whether you would like to set new ones. If you are continuing with your therapy, and with working collaboratively being at the heart of my work, I would usually use the review as a time to check in with you whether you would like to have regular reviews going forwards. Some of my clients have benefitted from this more structured approach whilst for other clients it is not so important.
The ending
From a therapeutic perspective a planned ending which is worked towards jointly by counsellor and client is the ideal scenario. The therapeutic relationship aims to give clients an array of skills to be drawn upon in the ‘outside world’ and endings are a natural element of relationships.
