There’s a first time for everything, and that includes counselling. We focus on what exactly clients can expect during a counselling session, including three of the major aspects of what makes up counselling altogether.
Looking for specific strategies and tips in this blog post? Refer to our table of contents below for easy reading:
Picture this: you’re sitting across from a counsellor. Do you know what happens next?
Some common tropes may come to mind. It’s not as well known or intuitive as, say, a massage therapist, physiotherapist, or dentist; it’s not like getting your teeth cleaned or being assigned a physio exercise. Counselling can be thought of as “mental flossing”, or a time to focus on a particular mental muscle that needs isolated strengthening.
Counselling and the broader field of mental health is (and has been) becoming ever-more a part of mainstream health & wellness activities people participate in to improve their healthspan. A lot of people come in with a vague idea of what they want from counselling which may look something like the following from Smith (as cited in Williamson, 2025):
“The common problem for clients is that there is a feeling or set of feelings that the individual has and does not want to have them. And there’s these other feelings they may like to have more of the time, but unsure of how to access them.”
So what exactly happens during the therapeutic process that moves one closer to those more preferential thoughts and feelings? Let’s focus on three of the major aspects of what makes up counselling, which are:
- Building rapport and trust with another person;
- Disclosing your concerns, relevant context, and relevant history;
- The unexpected (but interesting) part.
1. Establishing Rapport/Trust With Your Kelowna Therapist
The first crawl, step, or even jump into counselling, is building a trusting professional relationship with your counsellor. It’s a bit different than other health services as it involves (and hinges) upon a lot more personalizing between the client and counsellor.
What does it mean to build rapport/trust with a counsellor? From the client’s perspective, it’s when their counsellor demonstrates empathy, authenticity, congruence, a non-judgemental attitude, reliability, patience, responsiveness, and competence (Ardito & Rabellino, 2011; Opland & Torrico, 2024; DeAngelis, 2019).
Counsellors, on the other hand, report that they are looking for the following from their clients to know that a good rapport has in fact been developed: Openness and willingness to share, active engagement, nonverbal cues, trust and vulnerability, receptiveness to feedback, consistency and commitment, humor or lightness (where warranted), and verbal affirmations (Seebacher, Geimer, Neu, Schwarz & Diermayr, 2024).
What should good rapport feel like? Good rapport is where you feel, believe, and know that what you say is being understood, while at the same time being comfortable and trusting enough to share what you strive to have understood and/or understand.
Early struggles are normal, and to be expected. The “activation energy” of opening up drops as trust builds and initial efforts will soften into flow over time. Some people may not need to develop as much trust to speak about their concerns, or are slower than others to be trusting of their counsellor. Nonetheless, trust and rapport are crucial for the next part of counselling: opening up about your relevant context and concerns.
2. Unpacking Your Concerns, Relevant Context, and History
A large component of successful counselling outcomes is sharing your relevant context, history, concerns, and goals with your counsellor.
With that said, you don’t need to tell your counsellor everything that’s happened in your life to get you to this exact moment (that would take a considerable amount of time). Your counsellor only needs to know information that is relevant to the situation and your context. You may find your counsellor making a statement akin to the following:
“As your counsellor, I’m here to focus on what matters most to you; there’s no need to share your whole life story, just the pieces that feel connected to what you’re going through or where you’ve been. We’ll go at your pace, exploring what’s relevant together.”
Relevance is quite subjective. A good rule of thumb to use may be to include information that fits into this category. If it’s something you carry, wrestle with, can’t shake every time you think of this event or circumstance, or is helpful or hopeful to you, then that is worth bringing up. Regardless, we’ll figure out how it connects it to your story, or if it doesn’t.
This transitions nicely into our final component of what happens in counselling:
3. The Unexpected – Moments That Catch You Off Guard
You don’t know what you don’t know. And I don’t know what you don’t know either. What happens next and/or in conjunction with building rapport and getting to know your relevant context(s) is the unknown where your personality and perspectives meet with those of your counsellor.
Like hitting a pool break, who knows where those two minds will go? Counsellors don’t just nod and say pick-me-up pleasantries. They’ll call out patterns you miss (e.g., “You keep saying ‘should’, why?”). They may say nothing at all and you might not be comfortable with those silent periods as you sit with thoughts (unlike daily chatter or leaning on unproductive distractions/habits).
Coming to counselling is a risk that you will be emotionally exposed and called out on. However, risks shift perspectives; unexpected “aha” moments are common and often sought. You might laugh or cry out of nowhere; thoughts and emotions have a way of sneaking up, sometimes unexpectedly.
In the simplest of ways, just the very fact that you came in for counselling will shift your perspective in some way, making you a different individual than you’ve known before, and your responsibility to get to know. This component of counselling is the unpredictable part, but it’s also the part where there is discovery, insight, and growth.
Where you move into who you are as an individual or how you would like to be. It’s exploration and perspective taking; It’s guided discovery to connect past dots to now and where you want your future to go. It’s increasing and using emotional intelligence to help reshape or solidify viewpoints and understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy emotions, “good” or “bad”.
With all of that said, it’s completely common to “shop around” for a counsellor, as it isn’t a guarantee that the two individuals will resonate together. You may not prefer your counsellor’s approach or personality, or find they don’t share the same sense of humour as you. Your counsellor will be completely understanding of this if you choose to end services for any reason, and will actively encourage it if it seems as though you aren’t getting the help you need.
This is somewhat uniquely pronounced in the healthcare field. People are so unique, and counsellors are people too. It’s not as straightforward as fixing a joint that bends in an X, Y, Z axis or cleaning a tooth of plaque (this is not said at all to diminish those professions!). Counsellors and clients contend with everything that may make up a person’s personality and way of being, and there are a seemingly infinite number of ways to construct a personality and live a life. It’s natural to not get along with everyone.
So, to bring us back to the start of this section, do you know what to expect in counselling? And how do you know that?
Conclusion
Most people if asked would know what a dentist does, or understand that a particular exercise would strengthen a given joint more so than another. But when asked what a counsellor does, there’s a good chance that it’s a lot less understood.
There is the building of the therapeutic relationship, which is crucial to feeling comfortable and trusting enough to delve into your concerns and life goals. Next, there is the process by which yourself and your counsellor separate the ”wheat form the chaff” and determine what about your life is important and relevant to your concerns and goals. And lastly, is the unforeseeable interplay between the personalities and perspectives of the two minds engaged together.
There are many ways to live a life. Your counsellor is trained to help you live a life that is satisfying to you, and to help empower you to do what is in your control to make it so.
References
Ardito, R. B., & Rabellino, D. (2011). Therapeutic alliance and outcome of psychotherapy: historical excursus, measurements, and prospects for research. Frontiers in psychology, 2, 270. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00270
DeAngelis, T. (2019, November 1). Better relationships with patients lead to better outcomes. Monitor on Psychology, 50(10), 38. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/11/ce-corner-relationships
Modern Wisdom: #910 – Dr Julie Smith – The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding, Mar 2, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549?i=1000697316259
Opland C, Torrico TJ. (2024). Psychotherapy and Therapeutic Relationship. StatPearls. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK608012/
Seebacher, B., Geimer, C., Neu, J., Schwarz, M., & Diermayr, G. (2024). Identifying central elements of the therapeutic alliance in the setting of telerehabilitation: A qualitative study. PloS one, 19(3), e0299909. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299909
Written by Timothy Lamont C.C.C.
All of this is easier read than done. If you or someone you love would like to talk to one of our professional Kelowna counsellors, online or in person, contact us today!
