ABSTRACT
So, we’ve mapped out the goals for that all-important first session. In this chapter, we’ll look at the action steps you need to take to put all these goals in place. As mentioned in the last chapter, we can think of the first session as divided up into three sections, and that is the format we will follow here. As a way of illustrating the pacing of the session we’ll follow two cases—one couple, one family—approaching the session from a cognitive-behavioral model; understandably, your own approach may be different. Try not to get caught up in the clinical aspects of these cases, but rather see the clinical material as a medium for describing the first session process.
