What questions should I ask on the call?

Everyone is unique, and we all have different preferences for what we’re looking for from counselling. See if you can answer some of these questions yourself, and they might help kickstart the thinking process for you.

• Do you have goals or aspirations for your life, your emotional self or your relationships?

• Has there been any barriers or blocks to these goals? Can you describe them?

• Are there any feelings or situations that make you particularly distressed or uncomfortable?

• Do you have any obvious or clear issues you want to work through?

• When you imagine talking openly and honestly to someone, do you imagine the person sitting across from you to be a certain gender, or age range? Maybe you have no preference, maybe you do.

• What kind of appointment times can you accommodate? Realistically, do you have parameters around certain locations or times of week that you could access the time for counselling?

• Think about the area where you live, but also think about the locations where you might work, or regularly see family or have obligations. Your openness to places you can regularly get to will allow the intake team to look around those locations for the best person they can source for you.

• Are there any things you know would make you very uncomfortable or you do not want to come into counselling?

How do I prepare for my first counselling session?

There is no need to prepare anything specific prior to your initial appointment- It can however be helpful to think about what you might want to talk about in the sessions. If you have areas you’d like to target, have a think about describing these.

If you have goals for improvement (in your relationships, work or self-esteem for example), these are great points to bring to your first session- as well as any clear obstacles or barriers you know of that are making it more difficult.

What will happen in the first session?

In your first intake session, your therapist will be looking forward to meeting you and getting to know who you are and what you want out of your life. Administratively, the therapist will also go through any forms or information they need, and will explain their professional duties around things like confidentiality and consent. Your therapist will likely structure out most of the first session getting acquainted with you, your goals and things like family background, mental health history and general environment.

From there, they’ll probably work with you to create clear goals around what you’ll work on together in the sessions, to keep therapy focused on the right things for you.

How many sessions will I need?

How many counselling sessions you should have will vary according to the individual, and your therapist will consult with you on how many sessions for treatments they may recommend. As a rule of thumb, meaningful life changes and genuine progress don’t occur within one 60-minute session, so think long term about how counselling can help dig into long-held life patterns and change situations.

We believe that long term behavioural change starts by 4-6 sessions but is enriched (on average) by 8- 10 and beyond as ethically necessary for your full care. Forming a positive relationship with your therapist, feeling ready for change yourself and feeling confident in your therapist’s skill-set will maximise how much you can get out of sessions.