This post is for anyone who wants more details about the process of booking and completing your first counselling session. It’s a step-by-step guide of what happens and when, and what you need to do at each step.
1) Book a session
To start with, you go to the booking page and choose a time from the available times for your first session. You can choose whether you want to book a short introductory chat first (which is free) or whether you want to book a full session right away (which you need to pay for). Here is the page you can make bookings: Book Now
(If you want to use NDIS to pay for your counselling, you can still book an introductory chat, but you will need to email me to book sessions. This is because of how NDIS invoicing works. Just let me know if this is you, and we can figure it out!) My email address is anna@textcounsellingonline.com.au
You can also email me with any other questions or issues with booking (or anything counselling-related haha) and I will be happy to hear from you 🙂
2) Choose how I will contact you
After you book a first session, I’ll email you a link to an intake form. One of the questions on this form will be about how you prefer to be contacted for your session. Here is an example of what the question will look like:
If you prefer another app you can type it in and I will use that (as long as it’s free for me to access). If I have any problems, I will email you to ask for clarification. If you have problems, please feel free to email me too! I am very open to adjusting things if you need something done differently.
3) At your session time, I contact you
At the time of your session, I will send you a message through the contact method you have chosen. It will be something like “Hey there, Anna here! Ready to start your session?”
You reply to the message. For example, “Hey Anna, yes I’m ready” and then we go from there.
4) We talk about whatever is helpful to talk about
During the session, I will probably ask you some questions, which might be around topics like what you’re thinking about, what you’d like to talk about, how you’re feeling, what your opinions or preferences are, your memories, or how you’d like things to change. If a question is too hard or you don’t know the answer, you can always say that. There are no wrong answers.
You can also tell me if there are some topics you would like to talk about more or less (or not at all). If I ask something you prefer not to think about, just tell me that, and we won’t. And if I miss something important, please tell me! Counselling is always for your benefit, so I always want to know if something isn’t right for you.
5) We keep talking until the session time ends
As we get near the end of the session, I will let you know the time will be up soon, and we can finish off whatever we were talking about.
When we’ve finished, we will both say goodbye, and then the session will be over.
6) After the session
After the session it’s a good idea to have something relaxing for yourself planned. Some people find it really hard meeting a new person, especially if we talked about any difficult topics, so make sure you give yourself the time to relax and recover if needed. Even once we know each other better, therapy can still bring up unexpected emotions, so it’s important to do something nice for yourself afterwards.
When you’re ready, you can book in another session using the “Fees & Booking” page.
