First Session

You arrive at his office in the afternoon. It's located in an unusual place—a worn-down residential area. It exists in a small office building mixed in with a few houses on a corner. Maybe it was converted, but it looks more like a proper commercial space than a house-turned-office.

The location alone makes you question whether this is a good idea or whether he is a good therapist. You think about turning around. You don't know much about him anyway. He was referred to you from a religious center that you thought might be trustworthy. You think he may have a master's degree. His online bio mentions that he is “trauma-informed.”

You're in your first session. He sits about eight feet away from where you're sitting. It feels farther away than where your previous therapists usually sat. Is there an ideal distance for a therapist and client in a session? You like to think the sweet spot is more in the five-foot range, and it feels like you are talking at him, trying to pull him closer with each word.

The desk behind him seems huge because he has so much junk everywhere, like things are growing out of it. It's a mess. It has books, papers, food, plants, pictures, and other things scattered on it, and some things just hanging off the edges.

He holds a container of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter in his hand with the top removed and lost somewhere on his desk. He takes out big chunks with a spoon and eats it in front of you during the session.

A few minutes into the session, you both hear a loud noise outside the office, and you can tell someone is pacing frantically outside the door. He interrupts you and tells you to quiet down for a second and whispers that the man outside the door is one of his patients who is schizophrenic. The noise eventually stops, and your session resumes.

All these things strangely make you feel more comfortable with him. He feels approachable now. Human and broken. Like you. You take off your shoes to be more comfortable and to signal a kind of vulnerability, like your way of saying, "Hey, I trust you.” You tell yourself it's important to be comfortable. Maybe that will make you honest?

He hands you a “Feelings Chart” at some point. He tells you to just go down the list and call out what you feel. He tells you that you can feel contradictory things at the same time. He tells you it’s ok.

You go through the list and say how you feel: scared, lost, bored, confused, amphibious, airborne, rooted, solar-powered, nocturnal, 2D, multi-dimensional, spicy, grainy, frozen, magnetic, anti-gravity, sonic, mute, invisible, ultra-visible, quantum, classic, pixelated, organic, vaporized, dense, pixel-perfect, hyper-real, holographic, caffeinated, decelerated, eternal, expired, singular, omnipresent, sad, alone, etc. Your list goes on for 6 minutes. You ask him if that is too many. You end up just focusing on one or two for the session.

You wonder what approach he might filter you through. Is he partial to attachment therapy? Or maybe psychedelics is the way he’ll eventually go (you’ve heard that’s the next frontier). Which path will help you get better? Should you ask about God, or is that one too hard to build a therapy framework around?

You can't help but feel like you must do good in the session. You can't help but feel a need for his approval. It turns your session into performance theatre. Were you vulnerable enough? Did you cry? Did you hold nothing back?

You tell him things are going pretty well, which isn’t usually the case, given how things tend to go for you. But in the back of your mind, you think, “this won't last.” That is what you learned growing up, that nothing good ever lasts, that there is always something waiting.

He listens to you.
He is kind to you.
He is compassionate to you.
Many years later, beyond some of what you’ve just mentioned, that is all you will remember about your sessions together.