What About Now?

Jeff Levy, LCSW
(originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, June 2015)

During my first meeting with clients, I try to allow time to talk about what is bringing them to therapy while still saving time at the end of the meeting to talk about how I think therapy works. Sometimes, I don’t have to reserve time for this, because my clients will ask even before we talk about anything else. Other times, I may not be able to do this in the first session, but I try to do it as early in our work together as possible.
 
Part of the reason I share my thoughts about the process of therapy is for people to get a sense of my philosophy and orientation. I hope that this knowledge fosters informed decisions about goodness of fit. I’ve also found that for some—even those who have been in therapy at other times—sharing my perspective on how and why I think therapy may be helpful is not something they’ve heard in the past.

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