If you’re trying to decide whether a counsellor is right for you, a consultation can be a useful place to start. A consultation is its own kind of conversation. It isn’t a regular conversation, and it isn’t a counselling session either. There’s usually a fairly specific purpose: you’re deciding whether you might want to work with this person, and the therapist is trying to understand enough about what you’re looking for to know whether they may be able to help.
It gives you a chance to ask questions and hear how the counsellor communicates. But a consultation may only be 15 or 20 minutes, so I don’t think you need to expect yourself to know by the end whether this is definitely the right person for you. At that point, the question can be much smaller:
Is there enough here that I want to try a counselling session with this therapist?
The first few sessions tell you more
An actual counselling session tells you something a consultation can’t. There’s more time to talk about what’s happening, what feels important, and what you want help with. You get to experience how the counsellor asks questions, responds when something is complicated, offers an observation, or helps you look at something differently.
I don’t think everything needs to feel perfectly comfortable. Counselling can involve talking about uncomfortable and difficult things. What may matter more is whether the conversations feel useful, whether you generally feel understood, and whether there’s room for you to say when something doesn’t match your experience or you want to go in a different direction.
You may not know all of that after one session either. Sometimes you need a few sessions before you have enough experience with someone to decide whether you want to keep working together.
Your first impression is allowed to change too. Someone who seemed like a good possibility after a consultation may turn out not to be what you need. Something that felt a little uncertain at first may become easier once you’ve had time to actually work together.
I usually suggest giving it a few sessions
That’s also how I approach this decision in my own practice. When someone asks me how to begin therapy, my usual suggestion is to book a consultation, then an initial counselling session, and usually another two or three sessions before deciding whether it makes sense to set up a regular recurring appointment.
I like giving the decision that much room. The first session has a lot going on. I’m still learning about you, and you’re still learning what it’s actually like to work with me. After a few sessions, we’ve usually had enough real counselling together to know quite a bit more.
Maybe our conversations are helping you make sense of something that has felt tangled, think differently about a problem, make a decision, or figure out a practical next step. Maybe you’re finding that you can bring up things you weren’t sure how to talk about. Or maybe something about the way we work together isn’t what you need.
I’m paying attention too. I’m considering whether my experience and way of working make sense for what you’re looking for and whether I believe I can be useful. Choosing whether to continue counselling together isn’t a decision I expect you to carry entirely on your own.
You don’t have to decide everything at once
Booking a consultation doesn’t mean deciding whether you want to work with me indefinitely. You only need enough to decide whether you want to take the next step.
After the consultation, the next step might be: Do I want to try one counselling session with Alicia? After the first session, it might be: Do I want to give this a little more time? After a few sessions, you have actual experience of working together to draw from.
And if you’re unsure, we can talk about that. Sometimes that conversation helps us change something about how we’re working. Sometimes it helps us recognize that working with someone else would make more sense.
So how do you know?
If you asked me how you’d know whether you wanted to keep working with me, I wouldn’t give you one sign to look for. I’d suggest giving it enough time to have a few real conversations.
Over those conversations, I’d pay attention to whether you generally feel understood and whether the counselling is helping you think, process, make decisions, or understand what’s happening differently. I’d also pay attention to whether you can tell me when something isn’t working and whether we can do something useful with that together.
Then I think the question can become fairly simple:
Do I want to keep coming back and doing this counselling work together with Alicia?
If the answer is yes, that’s usually enough for now.
This blog shares general information and is not counselling or psychotherapy.
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