What to Expect?
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What to Expect in Therapy
Taking the first step into therapy can feel daunting, but we’re here to support you every step of the way. During our initial sessions, we’ll have an open and honest conversation about the challenges you're facing. We’ll explore how these difficulties might be affecting your mood and anxiety, and how they impact your everyday life. We’ll also discuss Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and how it can help you achieve your personal goals. Together, we’ll build a path forward tailored to your needs and expectations.
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Managing Anxiety
Understanding Your Anxiety: To start, we’ll take a deep dive into what anxiety is, how it shows up in your life, and how it affects your daily routine. Understanding this is key to managing it.
Techniques to Tackle Anxiety: Through CBT, we use a variety of techniques to reduce anxiety, such as:
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Exposure-Based Practice: Gradually facing your fears to diminish their power.
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Behavioral Experiments: Testing out anxious predictions to see how often they’re accurate.
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Relaxation and Cognitive Exercises: Challenging negative thoughts and building calming techniques.
By using these tools, we’ll work together to help you feel more confident in your ability to cope with anxiety and improve your overall well-being.
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Overcoming Depression
Understanding Low Mood: When we understand the underlying causes of your depression, we can begin the journey toward improving your mood. One of the first steps is Behavioral Activation—getting you back into activities you enjoy or that bring you a sense of achievement, even when motivation is low.
Challenging Negative Thoughts: We’ll also focus on recognizing and challenging the negative thoughts that often fuel depression. Over time, this can help shift the cycle of rumination (overthinking) that tends to keep depression going.
Additional Tools for Depression: Depending on what’s most helpful for you, we may introduce imagery or mindfulness exercises. These techniques help you break free from negative thought patterns and develop a healthier perspective on your emotions.
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Intersession Tasks: Putting It Into Practice
Therapy is most effective when the strategies we discuss are applied in real life. Intersession tasks (or homework) are a key part of the process. These tasks help you practice what we’ve worked on in therapy and track your progress.
Examples include:
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Writing down negative thoughts to challenge later.
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Conducting real-world experiments to test anxious predictions.
These tasks allow you to actively engage with your therapy and provide valuable insights for our future sessions.
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Follow-Up: Ongoing Support
Once your therapy sessions are complete, we offer a follow-up session to make sure you're feeling confident and supported. If any challenges arise or if you need a little extra guidance, we’re here to help. This follow-up ensures you have the support you need to continue making progress.
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Child & Adolescent Therapy: Tailored for Young People
Therapy for children and adolescents requires a special approach. We understand that each young person’s needs are unique, and we tailor our methods to suit their age, development, and family situation.
The Initial Assessment: In the first session, we’ll gather information from both you and your child to understand the issues they’re facing. If needed, we may have separate conversations with parents or guardians to address any concerns and ensure we’re all on the same page.
Therapeutic Sessions: Once the assessment is complete, we’ll decide on a treatment plan. Sessions typically last 45 to 60 minutes, and for younger children, we may involve parents more in the therapy process. As children grow older, we may adjust the level of parental involvement, depending on the individual.
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CBT for Young People
When working with children and teens, CBT is adapted to be engaging, fun, and age-appropriate. We may use creative methods like role-playing, storytelling, or games to help them understand their thoughts and feelings. For older children and teens, the therapy will focus more on understanding and challenging thoughts and behaviors in a way that resonates with them.
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For more information on how we work with younger clients, visit our Young Person’s Page for additional resources and explanations tailored for children and their families.
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