What happens in a first session

The question I am asked most before a first meeting is not about method, or training, or the fee. It is something simpler: what am I supposed to say when I come in.

The answer is that you do not have to say anything prepared. The first sentences almost always come out badly, and that is entirely fine.

The first few minutes

We sit down, I explain in three sentences how this works, and then I ask what brings you here. It is the only question I have no answer to in advance. From there I follow what you say: I am interested in the story, not the classification.

There are no tests to fill in. There is no intake questionnaire. I will not ask you to narrate your childhood in order, and if you start at the end that is fine by me.

The questions I do ask

There are three, and you will recognise them even if they come at different moments.

• Why now. Something has almost always been going on for months or years, and then something happens that makes carrying on unbearable. That something says a great deal.
• What you have already tried. Other work, medication, reading, changes of life. It keeps us from repeating what did not help.
• What you expect from this. Even if the answer is that you do not know. Especially if it is.

The silence

There will be pauses. Many people experience them as an embarrassment to be filled, and in a first meeting I tend to step in before they get heavy. Later in the work those silences become a resource, but that belongs to another conversation.

The last ten minutes

Towards the end I stop and tell you what I think I have understood. It is not a diagnosis, and it is put as a hypothesis, because at that point that is exactly what it is. Then I say what kind of work I would suggest, at what frequency, and why.

If I think someone else suits you better, I say so there and then. It happens, and it is not politeness: sending someone to the wrong place costs months.

When you leave

You do not have to decide on the doorstep. You can think about it, and many people write a few days later. It also happens that two or three meetings are needed to see whether continuing makes sense, and that is not wasted time: those are the sessions in which the question takes shape.