Not knowing what it is like stops more people than the fee does. So here it is, in order, including the parts nobody mentions.
Most people who write to me have been thinking about it for months. Sometimes years. The thing that finally makes them send the message is rarely a crisis. It is usually a Tuesday. And then, having sent it, they spend the next few days quietly dreading the call. Not because they think it will go badly. Because they have no idea what it will be like, and the mind fills that in with something worse than the truth. So here is the truth, in order.
You do not have to prepare. Some people arrive with a list. Others arrive having deliberately not thought about it, because thinking about it made it worse. Both are fine and neither tells me anything about how the work will go. You do not have to know what is wrong. If you knew what was wrong, you would probably have sorted it out. Working out what is actually going on is most of what we do at the start, and it is not something you are supposed to have finished before we begin.
We say hello and there is a small awkward patch. There is always a small awkward patch. I have been doing this for ten years and I have never had a first conversation without one. Then I ask you what is going on, and you tell me some version of it. Probably not the whole version. That is normal too.
At some point I will ask what made you write to me now, this month, rather than at any other time. People find this a strange question and it is the most useful one I have. Whatever is different about this month is usually connected to the thing you came to talk about, and often you have not noticed the connection yet. Sometimes the answer is a person, or a date. Sometimes it is that you finally had a free afternoon, which is also an answer, and a more interesting one than it sounds.
Listening for the shape of it. Not the details so much as the pattern underneath them: what you say twice, what you skip past, where your voice changes, what you apologise for saying. I am also, honestly, working out whether I am the right person for this. Sometimes I am not. If that is the case I will tell you in the conversation rather than three sessions in, and I will try to point you at someone better suited.
I am not diagnosing you. Nobody can diagnose someone in thirty minutes, and anyone who tries is guessing. Nor am I deciding what you should do about your marriage, your job, or your mother. That is not what this is, and if you have come hoping to be told, I would rather say so early. I am not judging the thing you are embarrassed about. I want to be plain about this because it is the fear that keeps most people from calling. Whatever it is, it is less unusual than you think, and I have almost certainly sat with a version of it before.
We talk about practicalities. How often, roughly how long, what it costs. You can ask me anything, including whether I have worked with this before and what I would actually do. And then we both decide. You are allowed to say you want to think about it, or to say no, or to say yes and change your mind next week.
Some people feel lighter. Some people feel worse for a day or two, because they have said out loud a thing they had been carefully not saying. Both are ordinary. The second is worth knowing in advance, because people who feel worse afterwards and were not warned tend to conclude the whole thing does not work. Usually what has happened is that something moved.
You will probably spend some of the conversation performing being fine. Everyone does. You will hear yourself doing it and be unable to stop. That is alright. It is information, not a failure. Whatever you were doing in that conversation is probably something you do elsewhere, and noticing it is where a lot of this starts.
Written by Satlaj Sachan, a counsellor in Bengaluru working Book a first conversation.