[Clinte89]

Hello all as some of you know I met with my therapist for the first time ever. It was exciting, nervous, and a little weird but at the same time comforting and nice. But I wonder how do you know what to bring up, just whats on your mind at the time? Or should I write down a list of things to cover during a meeting? Also she asked me alot of questions about do I know what causes my emotions which I often don't she seemed really interested in this. Should I be concerned? Well If I could get answers based on your experiences that would be great. I just dont want to waste another time half in tears over my sui thoughts.
Thanks

[~Christina]

I think therapy at first is hard and lots of tears are shed. I think the first 4 sessions I had I spent in tears choking out all the stuff that was tearing me apart .

My Therapist is amazing .. He told me later he " knew" I needed to just unload all my crap ... Then he asked me where I thought WE needed to start ... and I sat there literally dumbfounded , I had no idea ... I said maybe you should start where ever you think we should .. Where he started was exactly where we needed to start.

I have been seeing my therapist for over a year now( weekly) and when I first met him I decided to be completly honest about everything as I felt this was pretty much my last chance to get help. I was very unstable to say the least.

Therapist do tend to ask alot of questions as thats how they can find out just whats going on and how the best approach is to helping you..

Therapy is never easy its really hard work , but I think after you have worked thru some issues you will get a feeling of accomplishment.

Good luck ~ PM me anytime

[Clinte89]

Thanks I don't feel as if I wasted my time. I guess I'll see what Wednesday holds.

[bluemountains]

My first meetings were very tough, and good. The t was getting to know me, and I was trying to get comfortable with her. For me, I could not have a trusting relationship right away. My first few months I journaled my feelings and concerns. She would read these and we would take our discussions from there. Now, after a several months, I keep a list of topics I would like to discuss. I don't always bring up everything, but the list helps. Also, she will lead me into discussions that I hadn't expected. Each meeting is hard, but well worth the investment.

[BuggsBunny]

I agree with journalling your feelings during the week. It helped me a lot when i first got into therapy. Some of my issues I was able to resolve by myself, just by putting everything on paper, where I could read it through. Then toward the end of the week, usually the night before, I would look at my journal and decide what topics needed to be brought up the next day.We didn't always get to all of them, but at least I had a starting point. (Put the most important ones at the top of the list.)

If you aren't used to journaling, it will take you a while to get into the habit of writing your true feelings down. But keep trying, and it will come.

Congrats on making a very important step, and going to see a therapist!

[BlackPup]

For my therapy we just drifted over whatever came up, if it was important it seemed to have a habit of coming up often! I didn't have an agenda and neither did he, but sometimes there was something obvious in my life that needed addressing other times we just took the conversation wherever it went and some amazing things came up.

Congrats on making your first steps into T. Remember that your first T may not fit you properly and it can take a while to find one that you have good rapport with and works in a way that works for you. I hope you have gotten lucky with your first one!

It is hard work and tears come often and sometimes you feel worse when you leave than when you got there, but the hope is that you learn about yourself and how and why you think things and that you can change these things.

I agree with the journalling, for me it can be as helpful as actually seeing a T as you have to process thing as you write them so it can be very enlightening what you come up with.

[eloquentdisaster]

I will add another to journalling. Even writing down any questions you have, any insights about yourself, might help. I actually sometimes write letters to my T about things I can't express verbally, but he needs to know.

I couldn't jump into everything right away with my T, it took us quite a while before I could discuss pretty much everything with him, without turning into a sobbing (or yelling ) mess. Maybe tell your T what you think you can't/aren't comfortable talking about right now, then say what you do want to talk about.

[Clinte89]

Thanks everyone for the advice, I'll try the journaling and at least for wednesday, I'll try to write down some questions.

Originally Posted by Clinte89

Hello all as some of you know I met with my therapist for the first time ever. It was exciting, nervous, and a little weird but at the same time comforting and nice. But I wonder how do you know what to bring up, just whats on your mind at the time? Or should I write down a list of things to cover during a meeting? Also she asked me alot of questions about do I know what causes my emotions which I often don't she seemed really interested in this. Should I be concerned? Well If I could get answers based on your experiences that would be great. I just dont want to waste another time half in tears over my sui thoughts.
Thanks

it took some time for me Clinte...and I'm not surprised, I'm still locked up pretty tight!

arriving at sessions on the 'back foot' ...nervous extremely random and likely to dis-engage the person (cos it really is just a person)... the person wanting to help me. they also have bad functioning days so it's not all up to you.

it would be so much easier if they came to us telling us what our problems were and how it was upsetting them just how upset we couldn't explain we are!

one day I shook my head a bit as I do sometimes and decided to straight out ask ..."how can I make the most of these sessions? they are so short and far apart a week is like a year psychologically.

can you help me?

so often I let the poor therapy people sit there trying to guess and also unscramble my chit chat...if only I just coulda said..."hey today I'm gonna be all over the place chit chat scrambled and impossible"

..."I don't want to walk outa' here worse than I walked in"