What Is Therapy Like?
No-one wants to just jump into a situation that they know nothing about, especially when they are being asked to bare their soul upon doing so. There are a lot of questions that you probably have about therapy sessions, but they can probably all be narrowed down into one simple question: what is therapy like? The question may seem simple, but there is no easy answer in terms of what you will feel during the sessions. What we can tell you is that the framework is essentially the same with each individual, but what you get out of it really depends upon what you are willing to put in.
One of the first things that you are going to discover is that you basically control the pace of each session with your therapist. When you go to see your doctor, there is always a feeling as though they are trying to get you in and out as quickly as possible. That is not what happens in therapy, though, as there will be a specific block of time set aside for you, with no interruptions or feelings of being rushed. The answers that you seek from therapy are not likely to be found in a single session, which is why the whole thing feels very relaxed.
It’s the job of the therapist to put you at ease, and to set a tone in which you will be most comfortable discussing your problems. A professional therapist is trained to quickly asses your personality type, which allows them to cater the sessions to your specific character traits. For example, if you are open and very willing to talk, they will ask fewer questions, choosing to let you reveal your issues through your words. If, on the other hand, you are shy and quiet, the therapist will ask more questions than normal in an effort to help you get the words out.
What you may be surprised to find out is that your therapy session will feel more like a conversation with a friend than a visit to a health professional. In your first couple of sessions, you may even find yourself asking if the session has actually started, such is the natural conversation flow that a therapist puts in place from the moment you sit down and start talking. It is that ability to make you feel natural and at ease that so often makes it easier for clients to talk more openly.
Even if you do not get answers to all of your problems in your first session, which we can almost guarantee you won’t, we can say that you are probably going to leave feeling a whole lot better than you did when you arrived. The act of taking that first step to talk to a therapist is a big one, and it can feel as though a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders. Like I said earlier, you get out of therapy what you put in, and that is something to be discussed in more detail in another article.