Do you feel comfortable with your therapist?

Can you be honest and open with your therapist?

Is your therapist responsive to your concerns and questions?

Do you feel confident in their understanding of your concern?

Are you confident in their ability to help you with your concern?

Having a good fit makes a significant difference in making progress in counseling. It is recommended that you give your therapist 2-3 visits to find a connection, unless you are able to tell immediately that the personality fit is not going to click, in which case it makes the most sense to make a switch at that time.

In the first few sessions (1-4): You will tell your story, determine goodness of fit between yourself and your therapist, discuss goals and treatment plan, and build rapport. Effective long-term progress occurs after these items are established and cannot occur without these items.

The Treatment Phase:

After the first few sessions, then active engagement of the treatment goals and plan begins. This varies dependent on the client’s presenting problem and the therapist’s training and clinical orientation.

In these sessions you will work toward gaining insights, learning skills, expressing emotions, and more, which will help you make progress and see progress for long term change. The therapist can guide you, and you are responsible for engaging in the practice. The progress is directly related to your level of commitment to doing the work outside of the counseling office.

Once goals are completed, it is recommended that clients continue for “maintenance” phase, where a reduction in frequency of sessions occurs to assess and determine how the improvements are maintained as frequency lessens. If progress is maintained a client may move toward completion. If progress hits bumps, sessions will focus on how to manage these bumps.

Once you have successfully completed maintenance phase, showing success in maintaining progress with reduced frequency, clients complete therapy. Clients are welcome back to counseling to revisit concerns that flair up, strategies learned but forgotten, or if new presenting problems are experienced. If a client needs a maintenance check up, they can come in for a few sessions or more. If a new presenting problem arises, a client may start over in the cycle of the counseling process, with the likelihood that the complete cycle would not take as long as the first time through.

The length of the counseling cycle, from start to finish, is dependent on many factors. Questions to ask yourself: How long has this problem been occurring? How ingrained are my habits related to this problem? Has this problem ever had flair-ups after periods of feeling better? If your presenting problem is related to a relatively new situation and set of symptoms that you have never experienced in your history, and has relatively little to no habits associated with this, your cycle may be fairly short (a few months). However, if you have had long term concerns, please recognize that the counseling will work to help you experience and maintain long-term progress which will take time. Therapists may try to give you a timeframe, but will not be able to guarantee any specific timeframe as progress is predominantly determined based on how much effort is made to engage differently from day to day or even minute to minute outside of the office, based on what you learn in the appointments.