Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health,

personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions

of ourselves.

I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia.

For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at therapyforblackgirls.com.

While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute

for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional.

Hey y'all, thanks so much for joining me for a session 115 of the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast.

I know that there are many of you listening who may be thinking about starting therapy soon,

but you still may be feeling a little uncomfortable about exactly what happens in that first session.

So today I wanted to share some information about what happens in the first session to help you get a little more

acquainted with the process. So your first session, and maybe even your first couple of sessions,

is typically what we call the intake. It's our opportunity as therapist to get to know more about you

and what's bringing you into therapy, and it's also your opportunity to get to know more about how

we work and whether you feel comfortable talking to us. It's likely that before you attend your

first session, you'll have filled out some paperwork, so we might check in with you about whether you

had any questions, and we'll also likely spend some time in that first session chatting with you about

things like confidentiality and when it needs to be broken, our cancellation policies, and what steps

you might need to take in the case of an emergency. It's also likely that we'll talk with you about what

happens if we see each other in public, so I typically tell my clients that if I run into you in Wal-Mart,

I will pretend as if I don't know you, and that is in the interest of protecting your confidentiality,

so I don't ever want to put a client in a position of having to identify who I am if that's not

...