In our first session, the main goal is to understand what brings you to therapy, what you are hoping will change, and what kind of support you will feel most useful for you. I try to make the first session feel grounded, conversational, and human. Often, these first sessions can feel like interrogations because of the questions. I try to avoid that. Let's talk instead. You're neither a puzzle nor a diagnosis. We will start with where you are now, what has been difficult, and what you would like life to look like if therapy is helpful.

We will talk about your current concerns, symptoms, stressors, relationships, coping patterns, strengths, and goals. Depending on what brings you in, I may ask about anxiety, mood, trauma history, substance use, sleep, safety, shame, guilt, anger, avoidance, major life changes, or experiences that still feel unresolved. You do not have to share every painful detail right away. If trauma is part of your story, you can say as much or as little about it as you like. Good trauma therapy never looks like recounting every detail. Respect for your nervous system and your boundaries matters from the very first conversation.

Many clients come to therapy after spending a long time trying to push through, stay busy, take care of everyone else, or manage things privately. Some people know exactly what happened and why it still hurts. Others only know that they feel stuck, numb, overwhelmed, reactive, ashamed, anxious, or disconnected from themselves. In the first session, we begin making sense of that without blame.

I might ask about what has helped before, what has not helped, and what you already know about yourself. Therapy should build on your strengths, not just your symptoms. Even if things feel messy or overwhelming, you have already developed ways to survive, adapt, and keep going. Part of our work is understanding which coping strategies are still serving you and which ones may now be keeping you stuck.

My work is rooted in more than twenty years of clinical experience across corrections, community mental health, crisis intervention, and trauma care. I have spent years working with people navigating addiction, justice involvement, trauma histories, and complex life circumstances. These populations are often underserved and misunderstood. I hold advanced credentials in clinical counseling and substance use treatment, provide clinical supervision to graduate-level therapists, and currently serve in a leadership role at a county health and human services agency. My private practice, Walk of Life Counseling, focuses on trauma therapy and accessible telehealth care. That combination of institutional experience and private practice work shapes how I see people, not as diagnoses to be managed, but as individuals with histories that make sense.

Given that background, we might explore how your brain, body, emotions, beliefs, relationships, and nervous system interact. Sometimes anxiety is not just anxiety. Sometimes shutdown, avoidance, anger, people-pleasing, guilt, or self-criticism are survival patterns that developed for understandable reasons. We will work to understand those patterns while also identifying practical ways to begin changing them.

The first session is also a chance for you to get a feel for me. You can ask questions about how I work, what therapy may look like, what approaches I use, and whether I seem like a good fit for you. I draw from several evidence-based approaches depending on each client's needs, goals, and readiness. Brainspotting and EMDR are body-based trauma therapies that work with the nervous system to help process stuck or unresolved experiences, often without requiring you to talk through every detail of what happened. Cognitive Processing Therapy helps identify how trauma has shaped the beliefs you hold about yourself, others, and the world, and works to update those beliefs in ways that are more accurate and less painful. Polyvagal-informed therapy focuses on understanding how your nervous system responds to stress and threat, and building your capacity to feel safe enough to heal. I also draw from DBT for emotion regulation and distress tolerance, CBT for patterns of thought and behavior, and psychodynamic approaches when understanding early relational patterns is part of the work. These are not competing methods. They are different tools, and the right combination depends entirely on you.

The first session is not the place for deep trauma processing. Before doing that kind of work, I want to understand your history, current stability, supports, goals, and what helps you stay grounded. For some clients, the early work involves nervous system regulation, coping skills, safety planning, or reducing overwhelm. For others, we may begin identifying trauma-related beliefs, shame patterns, avoidance cycles, or relationship patterns that keep repeating.

By the end of our first session, my hope is that you leave feeling clearer. Not necessarily resolved, but clearer. We will talk about what stood out to me, what I think may be most useful to focus on, and what therapy might look like going forward. If it makes sense, we will begin sketching out some initial goals and discuss a realistic pace. You will have a sense of what approach or approaches might fit your situation, and why. You will also know what I am thinking rather than leaving you to wonder. Sometimes the next step is structured trauma work. Sometimes it is stabilization, nervous system support, or emotional regulation. Sometimes it is beginning to understand the deeper roots of shame, guilt, anxiety, or the ways you have learned to protect yourself. Whatever that next step is, we will identify it together.

You do not need to have everything figured out before we meet. You do not need to know the right thing to say. You do not need to tell your whole story all at once. You only need to show up as honestly as you can.

We’ll just start where you are and build from there.