[ofthevalley]

I feel as though I go in and talk about current events rather than well me. i'm pretty sure I pay to talk about me so I always leave a little perturbed. I was wondering if anyone wrote up outlines of things they wanted to discuss or if they provided their t with some background questions that they could ask to help open up about?

[laxer12]

When I started therapy I never went in with any sort of agenda. I was depressed so I generally just talked about how I felt throughout the week and my T guided me through her questions. As the depression lifted and we started talking about other things that had happened in my past or realizations I had had over the course of the last week, I began to have at least one thing that I wanted to talk about. Usually that one topic will take up the entire hour and will lead us toward something else. I think there was one session where I had two things I wanted to discuss so I changed the subject half way through after I didn't have anything else to say about the first thing.

I think a good therapist will help you come up with some stuff to talk about at first and will then guide the conversation to a place where they think some good stuff could come out. Another time my T asked me what I wanted to work on that week and I said I didn't know so she asked me about something she knew I was involved in and the conversation took off.

You can definitely come in with an agenda if you want or tell your T you need some help or guidance to get started. I'm not sure how long you've been in therapy but it is something that develops with time for some people.

A good place to start is what brought you to therapy in the first place and if that is still an issue for you.

[ThisWayOut]

I still have trouble talking in therapy. I try to write up a list of stuff I want to cover. A lot of the time though, I end up thinking it's all stupid. Sometimes I call and leave a message for T if there's something I really, really need to talk about but can't say to her...
When I first started though, it was similar to what laxer12 said; going in and talking about the depression and getting somewhere with that...

[guilloche]

I definitely write up stuff, especially if there's things that I really want to talk about and am afraid I will forget (it happens alot).

Also, I write stuff for my T to read. I'm really terrible at talking through things, and if I try, I'll end up minimizing or skipping things, or like ThisWayOut said, thinking it's stupid. I don't feel the same level of emotion about something when I'm in T's office as I did when the thing happened during the week... so I write about it when it's on my mind, as honestly as I can, then bring it in and let T read and respond.