What to Expect in Your First Individual Therapy Session: A Step-by-Step Guide
Starting therapy can feel both exciting and a little nerve-wracking. Whether you’re seeking support for a specific issue or simply exploring ways to improve your mental health, understanding what to expect during your first therapy session can ease some uncertainties and help you feel more prepared. This guide outlines the key steps involved in your initial therapy or counseling session, from finding the right licensed therapist to beginning the collaborative process of building a better future. Finding the Right Therapist Before your first therapy appointment, it’s essential to find a therapist who suits your needs. This involves researching professionals with expertise in the areas you want to address, such as anxiety, depression, relationship challenges, or stress management. Factors like location, availability, and insurance compatibility (or out-of-pocket cost) can also play a role in your decision. Most importantly, look for a licensed therapist whose approach aligns with your preferences. There are many types of therapy, such as existential therapy, integrative therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), psychodynamic therapy, or solution-focused therapy. Hundreds more “brands” of therapy mean that sometimes having a conversation with a potential therapist about the way they do therapy can make it easier to know what their approach is really
How Individual Therapy Can Help You Thrive: A Guide to Building Resilience and Emotional Well-Being
Life often presents challenges that can leave us feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, or stuck. Whether you’re facing anxiety, depression, or simply looking for ways to enhance your emotional health, individual therapy offers a transformative opportunity for personal growth. By providing a safe space to explore your thoughts and feelings, therapy can help you develop the skills needed to overcome obstacles and build resilience. In this article, we’ll explore how individual therapy focuses on fostering emotional well-being by addressing emotional or psychological difficulties, strengthening communication skills, and empowering you to thrive. A Safe Space for Exploration Individual therapy offers a supportive space where you can openly discuss your thoughts, emotions, and experiences without fear of judgment. This safe space encourages you to reflect deeply on your inner world, helping you achieve a deeper understanding of yourself and your challenges. Whether you’re navigating major life transitions or seeking relief from persistent stress, therapy provides a dedicated time and place to focus on your mental and emotional health. This environment enables you to identify patterns, gain clarity, and take meaningful steps toward improving your mental health. Gaining Insight and Building Resilience One of the most valuable aspects of therapy is the opportunity to gain
How far down can we bury things? Only as deep as our outstretched arms
Songs featured in this blog: Like Him (by Tyler, the Creator, CHROMAKOPIA, 2024) Stand (by Yebba, Dawn, 2021) seven (by Taylor Swift, folklore, 2020) Mother I Sober (by Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, 2022) Fourth of July (by Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell, 2015) If you don’t have some part of you carrying an unfathomable anguish as you walk the path of your life, it’s okay to stop reading this blogpost. Maybe come back when you feel that weight. “Unfathomable.” Where does this word come from? Un.fathom.able. A fathom is a measure of depth. It is about six feet. Six feet is the traditional depth at which we bury our dead. One fathom. Why six feet? Fathom comes from an old word for outstretched arms. One source says the old word referred to “something which embraces” or grasps. Sailors used to measure depth by dropping a line over the side of a boat with a weight at the end of it. After the weight hit bottom, they pulled the line up by stretching out their arms with each pull of the line. By counting the times they stretched out their arms, they could tell how many “fathoms”
How Practicing ‘Big Mind’ Can Guide Us From Panic to Calm
No matter how hard we try to avoid suffering, it seems that life will always test our limits. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to feel swept away and fear we’ll never find our way back to a sense of safety and stability within ourselves. When we eventually regain our balance, we may look back and wonder why we panicked. But in those moments, the fear of losing ourselves for good can feel very real. Overcoming this anxiety requires faith in something solid and reliable. I find the wisdom of the Zen Buddhist tradition offers a simple but poignant answer. In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki writes as he describes “big mind,” “The true understanding is that the mind includes everything… Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. For us there is no fear of losing this mind. There is nowhere to come or to go…” If we can slowly question, understand, and start to believe this, a shift happens. We can’t escape ourselves, so the joy and vitality we’ve felt, maybe especially in childhood, can never truly disappear. It’s just beneath the surface, waiting to be found again. Where else would it go? It can feel hard to believe this,
How to be Yourself: A Lesson from Johnny Cash to Nick Lowe
(from an interview with Tom Casciato, PBS Newshour, September 24, 2024) Johnny Cash once said to me (incredibly disappointingly, I thought at the time): “Nick, what you have got to do is figure out how to be yourself.” I didn’t really know what he meant. (I thought, “Is that the best you could do, John?”) But, actually, now I do. Because, when you’re young, you’re trying to sort of cop an act. You are trying to be – always trying to be –somebody that you’re not. And you’ve got to sort of welcome in the things that you don’t really like about yourself, you know. But welcome it in! Because if you can figure out how to be yourself, it makes things so much easier. ——– Commentary: What does it mean to ‘welcome in’ the things we don’t like about ourselves? And how is that the key to becoming ourselves? Welcoming in the things we don’t like means to stop resisting the truth and simply feel the truth of how those things are already alive inside of us and happening, whether we like it or not. And if we can say something like, “I get really scared when someone gets
Anxiety versus Fear
With everything going on in the world today, and so many events affecting us, it can be difficult to identify what we are feeling at any given moment. It is safe to say though, that each one of us has been able to identify feelings of worry, anxiety, or fear. It is important for us to learn to identify which emotion is actually present: anxiety or fear. There are differences between these two emotions, even though they can show up at similar times and feel the same within the mind and body. Despite how similar they are, the ways we cope and deal with them are different. Anxiety exists like a cloud, and can have anywhere from a slight influence on how we feel to a tight grip on our thoughts, narratives, and behaviors. Sometimes it might be hard to identify why you feel anxious, and that can perpetuate the feeling. A good friend and psychologist once said to imagine anxiety as a cloud that is always with you. Now imagine that the cloud is attached to one end of a rope and that you are attached to the other end. When we feel the anxiety and pull away from
4 Existential Truths – How Modern Life Makes Them Harder & How Psychotherapy Can Help or Hurt
1. Freedom When people first learn about existentialism, it can seem like a depressing, boring, or hopeless philosophy. But for those practicing existential psychotherapy (or at least addressing existential themes in therapy), dealing with some of the difficult or terrible stuff in an authentic and brave way can help people experience the most precious gems of life: real joy, love, desire, wildness, belonging. Here is a list of what Irv Yalom boiled down to the four “existential givens” that we wrestle with: our essential freedom and ultimate responsibility; our isolation and unavoidable loneliness; the meaning we must provide or find in life’s meaninglessness; and the inevitability of our death and the deaths of everyone we love. People often come for psychotherapy to deal with one or more of these existential givens without even realizing that is what they need to do. Unless you studied philosophy or psychology in grad school, you probably didn’t come across these concepts. But they are everywhere, and these 4 existential givens are a very helpful way of seeing the fundamental struggles we all face (or avoid facing). We each get to make choices and deal with the consequences, never knowing what will actually happen as
How Running Away Can Help Us Return
Song featured in this blog:Hejira (live performance by Joni Mitchell, Shadows and Light, 1979) Coping with this crazy life—and feeling sane—comes partly from accepting how impossible it all is. This is the kind of paradox that makes ‘achieving’ mental health so difficult. As Rumi put it, “Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left.” Joni Mitchell understood this quite well at the age of 30, and it was likely her visit to Colorado in the mid-1970s that helped it sink in. Joni met up in Colorado with Chögyam Trungpa, who founded Naropa University in Boulder, and Shambhala Mountain Center in Red Feather Lakes, after touring with Bob Dylan, and while doing some cross-country road trips. She wrote an album during that time, and called it Hejira, an approximation of an Arabic word for exodus, or as she put it: “running away with honor.” She had just broken up with her boyfriend. There’s a paradox in that idea of running away with honor, so we may as well start here. In therapy, how might we talk about running away with honor? By accepting how impossible it all is. This may be a literal walking away from something
I’m Right Where You Left Me
Songs featured in this blog: She Used to be Mine (by Sara Bareilles, What’s Inside: Songs from Waitress, 2015) right where you left me (by Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner, evermore, 2020) Song to the Self (by Shawn Mullins, Eggshells, 1996) Outside my office door, there is a small quilt hanging on the wall with the image of a Sankofa bird stitched as the centerpiece. In Ghanaian culture, the Sankofa bird represents the importance of going back to retrieve what was left behind. The bird’s feet face forward, but its head is turned backward as its beak fetches an egg from the top of its own back, or places the egg on its own back, to bring it along. The bird turns to reclaim what it needs from the past. The bird makes sure to bring its past along with it. The paradox in the image is that it has been carrying what it needed the whole time: It is the bird’s own beginning (an egg), and it only has to turn around to find it. The Sankofa is a powerful and ancient symbol of the Akan tribe which is not only important to that culture, but is also the
11 Things to Remember When Searching for a Therapist
I have been a therapist in private practice for 25 years, but I was in therapy for about 15 years before that. I started as a client when I was 11 years old; and over the years, I had great therapists and terrible therapists. Here is what I learned from being a mental patient and from working with (and witnessing) a wide variety of colleagues for decades. 1. There’s no need to be defensive or awkward about needing help and support. I called myself a “mental patient” above, on purpose. Look, I seriously needed therapy. I had to see a shrink. A check up from the neck up. Some serious psycho-archaeology. Where is all this shame about needing therapy coming from? I grew up in the D.C. area where a ton of people (kids and adults) were in therapy in the 70s and 80s. It seemed totally normal and lots of people could get it (insurance paid for it much more freely than it does now). It’s sad how awkward people are about it, and it’s now 50 years later. 2. Everyone is different, and no therapist or therapy is the “best”: There are approximately 1.7 trillion different “approaches” to therapy, and each of these
Building Emotional Intimacy: How Couples Therapy Can Strengthen Your Bond
Emotional intimacy is the glue that keeps relationships strong, vibrant and fulfilling. It’s about understanding, accepting and connecting with your partner on a deep, psychological level. However, building and maintaining emotional intimacy can be challenging. At the Colorado Center of Clinical Excellence, we understand this challenge and are committed to helping couples foster stronger bonds. Before we delve into how therapy can help, let’s first identify some signs that you may need to build more emotional intimacy in your relationship: Feeling Disconnected: Experiencing a sense of isolation or disconnection, even when sharing the same physical environment, could be a potent sign of dwindling emotional intimacy. It’s like you’re co-existing rather than truly connecting on an emotional level. This situation often implies that you and your partner are not emotionally synchronized, which can gradually erode the fabric of your relationship if left unaddressed. Lack of Communication: Maintaining regular, open and sincere communication is a crucial pillar for any relationship. If you notice that your conversations have dwindled down to surface-level exchanges or have ceased entirely, it’s a significant warning sign that should not be overlooked. Avoiding Conflict: While it may be natural to want to steer clear of disagreements or heated