What to expect from your first counseling session in Denver, NC

So, you are at a place where you recognize something needs to change. Maybe you just want to work on self improvement or possibly want to help to eliminate some negative symptoms you are struggling with. You are trying to understand what you should expect if you start seeing a counselor or therapist in Denver, NC. You want to know what will happen before the first session, in the first session, and after it. Here are some answers:

What will happen after you decide to schedule?

After your initial consult, when you are officially scheduled for your session, you will be sent an email. This email will help you to get set up in our electronic healthcare record system and help you to complete all of the necessary paperwork before your first appointment. This paperwork will include the legal stuff we have to get signed like our confidentiality agreement, but also includes some quick assessments that help us to get a baseline for things like anxiety and depression.

What do you need to do to prepare for the first session?

In preparation for the first appointment, you will need to fill out the online paperwork mentioned above and provide your insurance information, if you have not already done so. However, another important thing to do is to be thinking about what your goals are for counseling. Some people have a hard time remembering whenever they feel like they are on the spot and benefit from making notes that they can read during their appointment.

What happens in the first session?

When it comes to what you should expect in your first session of counseling, it is first important to understand what the point of the first session is all about. Here at Equalize Counseling & Consulting, we have four main goals to accomplish during our first session: discussing boundaries, determining fit, goal setting, and proving hope.

Discussing boundaries is the first part of everyone’s first counseling session. This is both best practice for us as counselors, but also is a legal requirement. During this phase of the conversation, counselors will start off by communicating the laws and ethics surrounding confidentiality. This make sure that everyone is on the same page before starting to dig in. Also, this is a time where Many counselors or therapist will also discuss practice policies or other boundaries that their clients need to be aware of.

The second one, determining fit, means we want to get to know you and what brings you to counseling. Part of this conversation is to allow us to begin to develop a therapeutic alliance with you. This is a fancy way of saying we want to see if we are able to form a helpful relationship with you where you can feel comfortable sharing what you came to counseling for. Everyone is unique and gets along better with different types of people. Regardless of how educated or experienced a therapist is, if you simply do not like their personality, then counseling is not going to be as helpful for you, because you will not feel comfortable being transparent with your counselor. Another aspect of this initial conversation for determining fit is that it helps us to address whether or not we have the necessary skills and experience to help you with what you need help with. One of the good things about doing the initial consult with Equalize Counseling & Consulting is to assist us with answering this question before you start therapy (we prefer to know that we have the necessary skills to help you before that first session so we don’t waste anyone’s time or money).

This part of the conversation typically starts off with an open mind-ended question from the therapist that gives the client the ability to share, whatever they feel would be helpful and gives the counselor something to jump off of. We then will ask questions in order to get a better understanding as well as help and determining exactly what a client wants to gain out of therapy. Many times in this conversation, we also are taking some time to learn more about who the client is as a person. Often times we will talk about their day-to-day life in order to better understand them and engage in some back-and-forth conversations to help develop that initial relationship (while the conversation should be focused on you and your experience, it would be kind of offputting if everything seemed robotic and clinical).

The third reason for the first session is goal-setting. Whether you are looking for short term therapy (getting done as soon as possible) or are looking for a therapeutical alliance that you can stay in for as long as you’d like, counseling simply will not be very effective if we do not have goals that we are aiming at.

Based on what brings you to counseling, we want to create a game plan that helps you move forward towards whatever your goals are for counseling. This is usually an interactive process where clients request what they are looking for while also listening to what the therapist thinks may be helpful in order to give their input. By the end of the first session, there should be at least an initial goal that the client and therapist are working towards, if not several, and everyone should be on the same page.

Lastly, our goal as the therapist is to help you to see a light at the end of the tunnel. So, as we are discussing what brings you to counseling as well as going through the goalsetting process, our job is to help clients to feel understood, and also inspire hope. Many times we will do this by discussing the details of our goalsetting in order to help clients better understand why we are going to do the things that we are doing and what they can expect along the way. Part of this is to establish some realistic expectations but another big part of this is to help to inspire hope.

To best explain why we do this, imagine you went to a doctors office and they said you can try this treatment but we don’t really know if it’s gonna work. You might not be very consistent with doing the treatment, if you did it at all. You definitely wouldn’t feel like you found a solution. So as therapist, we want to help inspire people so that they actually follow through on what we are doing in counseling to make the changes that need to be made for treatment to be effective. If you leave your first counseling appointment and you feel off put or think there is no way that the counselor can help you, why would you even come back? I know I wouldn’t.

Will I have homework?

Based on your personal experience, in the first session, you may have homework immediately following the first session, or you may not. For some clients, we are able to quickly and easily get through the goal-setting part of the appointment, especially whenever we have done ann initial consult. In these cases, we are able to dive in more quickly into our first set of skills. In this case, there probably will be some homework, which will include starting to utilize the skills. However, there are some circumstances where it may take a second session before we are able to fully complete goal-setting. In this case, typically the homework is a continuation of the preparation for the first session, which is taking some time to think about what goals you would like to have. There are also times where we are able to complete goal-setting right at the end of session, and so there is no homework to work on between sessions because we haven’t started our first set of skills yet but we were able to set up the goals for therapy.

When will I have my next session?

In most cases, the next session will happen the following week. It is best practice to start counseling weekly and to wean off as goals met and symptoms decrease. Most times, we will attempt to schedule people for a regular time so that they always know when their session is. However, we can also be flexible to adapt to various schedules, so if you do not have a set time, we will either schedule at the end of the session or provide you the opportunity to schedule online at your leisure.

What if I don’t like what happened in the first session or I am not sure it is a good match?

Sometimes, whenever we start counseling, there could be a reason that it did not feel like a good fit. Ultimately, our goal is to help you accomplish whatever goals that you have. If you do not feel like an individual or a situation is a good fit for you, then that is OK! You deserve to have the care that you desire and need! Because everyone is an individual with different needs, this also means that we cannot assume that one size fits all, especially in the field of counseling. So, if something did not feel right, then let us know! We understand and we will gladly work with you in order to help you find a better fit, whether it is with our practice or not.

We hope this helps you find the right therapist or counselor in Denver, NC!

If our practice sounds like it would be a good fit for you, we would love to hear from you! You can reach out to schedule your free initial consult by calling 704-815-6440 or reaching out to us on our contact page. Please also feel free to reach out if you have any questions about what you can expect in your first counseling appointment or follow up questions after your first counseling appointment. We look forward to hearing from you!