If you are an adult no one can force you into therapy unless for example the police, court, child protective services department of human services are involved and you have been court mandated into therapy for a certain amount of time or until a therapist deems you are no longer a threat of harm to yourself or others. If you are under 18 years old your parents can look into therapy options and make and attend the intake appointment and force you into therapy.

Otherwise you do not HAVE to attend therapy unless you want to.

What to expect -

an intake appointment where a therapist or therapeutic receptionist will ask questions - name, address, phone number, insurance information, a brief history of any past therapy, and why you need to be in therapy.

If your local mental health agencys are like mine the information the therapy personel took during the intake appointment is given to a supervisor in charge of assigning the case loads to the agency therapists. That supervisor reads over the file and matches the person with the therapist best suited for the types of problems that were discussed during the intake appointment. Then the therapist makes contact with the person needing therapy and sets up the first appointment.

At the first appointment the therapist varifys the information given during intake and asks for more details. During the next few sessions the therapist and client decide on what gaols to work on during the following sessions.

And then its just a matter of the client and therapist working towards and meeting those goals.

Now a therapist can't fix the clients problems or be their buddy buddy type friend. Their job is to challenge the client to look at their problems (including and usually those that the client wants to avoid), from all angles so that the client can find or see the solutions themselves and make changes in their life outside of the therapy room that will make their lives better.

Basically therapy is what the client brings into it. If the client comein with the attitude that they are not going to try to answer the questions or do the work be it journaling, workbooks, researching, art work (whatever the suggestions from the therapist are) and they don't apply the new coping skills discussed in therapy to their out side th therapy room life then they are not going to have a very good therapy experience.

But those clients that go into therapy and actively work on the goals, suggestions and so on are usually the ones that come out of therapy and say they had a great therapy experience.

You might want to make a list before you go to your first appointments of questions to ask the therapist, what you think is the problem, goals you would like to work on and what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals, and what you are not willing to do to accomplish those goals.

good luck and take care.