What to expect from the counselling process

Typically, the first session addresses why you have come in for counselling, some of your background and what you hope to achieve. People often experience a sense of relief in talking to an empathic listener about their lives.  It can be useful to think about what you want to learn/understand/change in order to live a more fulfilling life before you come in for the first session. To understand how therapy is transformative.
Here are some important aspects of therapy:

Psychotherapy is about relationship

Through the relationship with a therapist you will discover aspects of yourself that have been denied or lost. The relationship with your therapist allows you to become conscious of your experience through the reflection and attention that is given to you. In order to cope, you may have developed ways of dealing with emotional pain that have separated you from your experience. Typically people report a mixture of feelings at the beginning of therapy. There is relief in feeling supported and safe in expressing oneself, yet discomfort with the growing awareness of experiences you have defended against.

Therapy is a process of inward focusing

Over time you will feel more comfortable with your feelings, thoughts and sensations. We  become more self aware by focusing inward and sharing that with sensitive others. As therapy proceeds you will relax into your experience further. Emotional and mental health can be seen as the ability to integrate what we experience in the world around us with our internal reality.

Therapy increases self-awareness

Through therapy the illusions we may have constructed to deal with pain and disappointment begin to fall away. This happens slowly so that we can absorb new information about ourselves. Therapy is full of these transformative moments. Integral to this is what happens between you and your therapist. How we experience each other is important therapeutic material: it is used to bring your defenses and experience into awareness.  A skilled therapist will be able to gauge the rhythm and pace of the client’s needs.
 
Therapy is self-examination of internal processes that prevent you from living the way you wish.

We naturally want to avoid painful feelings, but the avoidance often creates more  suffering. An important task of therapy is to tolerate all of our feelings, positive and negative.

So you can begin to have a different relationship with yourself.

Therapy is also about encouragement

Only you can change things in your life. Therapy provides a place to rehearse and prepare for the changes you want to make. As you practice relating differently in the safety of the counselling relationship you will gain confidence in translating that practice to your communications with other people in your life.

How long should counselling take?

In our society taking time goes against the general ethos. We want things fixed easily and at 'high speed'. This puts pressure on all of us to come up with a quick fix for the difficulty at hand. There is nothing wrong with solutions but becoming more deeply conscious may not seem like a solution in a quick fix world.