Sean White

About

The first conversation is quieter than people expect and involves a lot less history than they have braced for. I generally ask about now: how you are sleeping, what your week contains, what you would like to be different in six months. The past can wait, and often should. That surprises people who assumed we would start at the beginning. Childhood wounds are not best approached by working chronologically forward from the earliest event, and beginning there tends to produce a lot of difficulty with very little benefit. We start from what is bothering you now and follow it back only as far as turns out to be useful. I came to this work through my own time as a client, where a therapist began at the beginning and I stopped attending after four sessions. I learned something from that. If you have been dreading starting at the beginning, we would not.