Starting Therapy
Making the call
Making an appointment for therapy is usually done through a phone call. This is referred to as the “intake call.”
The call is usually answered by an intake specialist or an administrative support specialist. They’ll let you know if the therapist is accepting new patients. If they are, the specialist will ask you a few basic questions to get you in the system and schedule your first appointment. If you have questions or concerns, they may connect you to the therapist to help provide more information. If the therapist is not accepting new patients, you can ask if there are any other practitioners or practices they recommend you reach out to.
If you aren’t sure exactly what to say, you can start with something as simple as, “I think I need to talk with someone.”
This is how a typical first phone call might go:
Darryl: Hi, Daryl McClish. How can I help you today?
Client: Hi, Daryl. The, the person who answered the phone said I could talk with you a little bit. I've been thinking that I might need to talk to someone. I just, I have some stuff I wanna talk through, but I've never done this before. I've never been to therapy, and I just, I don't really know where to go from here.
Darryl: Okay, so the first step is that you gave me a phone call. The next step is going to be on, you know, you deciding on if you wanna move forward with scheduling that first session. The first session will either be telehealth, since that's now an option, or it could be here in person at my office.
Client: Okay, it's confidential?
Darryl: Yes, it's 100% confidential. Everything that we discuss stays between myself and you. You're gonna have paperwork that our administrative assistant is gonna be working on you with that they will send to you, which will go over all the details of counseling and I will be reviewing with that, that with you as well, to make sure you understand.
Client: Okay. I just, I'm still not sure if this is, this is for me. So like, you know, can we just have, like, one session or do I have to keep coming? How does that work?
Darryl: No, everything's, you know, consent, you know. You decide on how often you wanna meet or how long you wanna meet. If we have one session and you wanna go elsewhere you're able to do that anytime. There's no type of commitment you need to make at all moving forward.
Client: Okay. Cool. Alright. Then, let's, let's try to get something scheduled then. Thank you.
Darryl: You're welcome. Let me just transfer you back over and we'll get you in the calendar a for session with me then.