Have you felt as if life is too much to handle? Maybe you face constant anxiety, persistent sadness and hopelessness, or even the effects of trauma. Fortunately, getting professional counseling care serves as an effective and helpful option for addressing these concerns.
Millions have benefitted from finding a good counselor to share life’s burdens with. These professionals attained master’s degrees and certificates in mental health and know science-backed ways to help you feel better.
Yet, entering counseling care proves terrifying for many. After all, most forms of talk therapy involve meeting a person you don’t know much about and sharing your deepest concerns. Still, your nerves might settle a bit if you know what to expect when you start going to therapy. So, we’ll get into everything you need to know in this article!
Entering Counseling Care
Before Your Appointment
Once you’ve scheduled your appointment, the counseling center may give you some paperwork to fill out. In some cases, you will complete the paperwork at the center on the day of your appointment.
Increasingly, though, people fill this information out online. Usually, the questionnaires ask about your personal medical and mental health history. In addition, they collect information on your current symptoms and insurance (if applicable).
If you want to take care of yourself before your first session, try guided meditation from Headspace.
The Intake
Most likely, your first appointment won’t look like your subsequent therapy sessions. This is because the first step in getting counseling care involves undergoing an intake assessment.
Your counselor may or may not conduct your intake. Sometimes, the counselor oversees the intake and then sets up subsequent sessions. In other cases, a staff member assesses you, and then the center assigns you a counselor based on your needs. In still situations, busy counselors might have someone else do the intake to save time.
Informed Consent
During the intake session, whoever performs the intake will start with informed consent. Basically, this outlines the terms of what will happen in therapy and informs you of the site’s confidentiality policy.
Still, most therapists promise to keep everything clients tell them confidential, save for a few exceptions, including:
- The client states an intent to hurt either their person or someone else. These forms of harm include plans to commit suicide or injure/kill another person. However, counselors often keep suicidal thoughts that occur without a plan confidential. They do so because the client has not expressed an intent to act on those thoughts.
- Someone mentions the abuse of a child or elderly person.
- A court subpoenas the client’s records. Sometimes, this happens in the case of couples undergoing divorce or people who commit crimes. Clients have no control over whether a court subpoenas their records or not.
However, clients can ask their counselor to assert the therapist’s right to keep the information confidential. Legally, this is referred to as “privilege,” and judges decide whether privilege gets honored. So, if the judge rules that the counselor may not assert their privilege, the therapist will have the legal responsibility to share the information with the court.
Assessment
Informed consent usually doesn’t take too much time. After it finishes, the person conducting the intake may ask you a series of questions to identify your presenting problem.
Further, they’ll ask you about any previous or current suicidal or homicidal thoughts. Many people fear the person will judge them if they answer honestly, but it’s important to remember that people in this position only want to help. They won’t judge you, and they need honest answers to provide the best counseling care.
Therapy Sessions
Once you’ve completed the intake, you’re ready to start therapy.
Therapists do their craft in a variety of ways and in a variety of settings. The activities they do in session often depend on the theory they’re using and the format they’re working in. Still, the 3 most common types of counseling consist of individual talk sessions, family sessions, and group therapy.
In individual counseling sessions, you and the therapist meet together in a quiet room. They’ll ask you questions about your concerns and employ techniques to help you get through difficult situations. In addition, they may assign you some brief homework to work through before your next session.
Want to work through some of your presenting problems at home? Try this mental health workbook.
Family sessions often involve multiple members of the same family seeing a therapist together. During the session, the counselor will help the family members work through specific issues facing all of them.
Before booking a family session, ask the therapist who needs to attend. Sometimes, counselors require the presence of everyone in the family. In other cases, the therapist will only see a few family members.
Finally, group counseling care involves non-related people meeting at regular intervals to discuss their problems. A therapist leads and organizes these groups. Usually, group members all face similar problems or challenges and benefit from the community and input.
When Will You Start Feeling Better?
We all wish for a magic way to just snap our fingers and feel perfectly happy and healthy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, even in therapy.
Let’s get this out of the way: counseling care often proves very effective. Many people who seek it out report many improvements in their emotions and other areas of functioning.
Still, therapy addresses hard issues, and working through problems may cause some emotional distress. In fact, some therapists even tell their clients they may feel worse before feeling better.
If you notice counseling sessions seem extremely difficult for you, talk to your counselor about them. After all, counselors know many different techniques and might have the ability to revamp their treatment plan for you! As always, tell your counselor immediately if you start to experience hopelessness or thoughts of killing yourself.
In addition, remember that you’re in control of everything that happens in therapy. If you don’t feel comfortable doing something, simply tell your therapist, and you won’t have to do it. They’ll come up with another way to achieve your goals.
Schedule Your First Appointment
Now that you know what to expect when you first start counseling care, time to get that first appointment on the schedule! In particular, look for a therapist who specializes in the issues you’re seeking treatment for. And don’t be afraid to look around if you don’t particularly like the style of a certain counselor.
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