What happen during the first session?

The first counselling session is different from any subsequent sessions. In the first session, you will introduce yourself to the counsellor and also get to know a little bit about your counsellor. Your counsellor will explain to you about the counselling process and procedures, informed consent of private and confidentiality, discuss boundaries and the exception of confidentiality.

As the therapeutic process begins during the first interactions, your counsellor will gather information about you and the specific reasons that brought you here to ask for help through a series open-ended questions where you would be asked to share about your difficulties and some personal background information. Together with the counsellor, you will work to establish the goal for your counselling session. A tentative treatment plan and psychological intervention approach would be suggested by your counsellor to address you concerns and/or problems, and work towards to achieve your goal for your counselling session. In most time, the goal of counselling is to learn about our habits and patterns of feeling and behaviour and how they cause us problems. We can then learn new habits and patterns which will be more successful for us. Counselling provides a special setting in which we can learn about ourselves enabling us to be more effective in our relationships with others and with ourselves.

This is an opportunity for your counsellor to get to know you better and for you to ask any questions you might have. You can take this time to see how you feel with your counsellor and to get a sense of whether you could work well with them. It is important that you feel safe, supported and that this person has your best interests at heart.