meganedwardscbt@gmail.com 
www.meganedwardscbt.com
www.meganedwardscbt.com
The purpose of the first appointment is for an assessment. This will give you the opportunity to discuss your difficulties in detail and to find out what you would like to get out of CBT. It also provides an opportunity for us to meet and to discuss how CBT works in more detail and to see if this is the right approach for the kind of difficulties you are experiencing. We will also be able to discuss an approximation of the number of sessions you may need and the frequency of these. It may be we decide to have more than one assessment session in order to make sense of your difficulties fully together, before we decide to proceed.
The assessment session usually lasts 50-60 minutes.
The number of therapy sessions you will need varies depending upon the type of difficulties you are experiencing. We will discuss this at your first assessment appointment, and the number for you will be agreed jointly, based upon your needs. This will be reviewed regularly. Initially it is most helpful to meet on a weekly or fortnightly basis, with the time between sessions increasing as you progress through therapy. Typically between 6 and 20 sessions of CBT is usual.
All therapy sessions usually last 50-60 minutes.
In the first few sessions we will begin to make more sense of your difficulties, building upon the assessment, we will develop your therapy goals and make sure that you understand and are happy to proceed with therapy.
The focus of CBT is the present or 'here and now', but it is important to gain an understanding of how your problems have developed and been maintained so we will also discuss information about your past life and background to help us with this.
At the beginning of each session we will start by agreeing a plan of what we are going to discuss in this session. Typically this involves reviewing your progress since the last session and any homework (in between session tasks) you have been doing.
Homework exercises are a central part of CBT. These will vary from session to session, depending on the focus at the time. We will always agree on this together, you will not be given tasks to do. Your problems affect you in your day to day life, the aim of homework is to allow you to try out new approaches for your difficulties which you can then discuss in your next therapy session. Examples of homework include reading, keeping a diary or record sheet, completing questionnaires, experimenting with new ways of thinking or behaving.
Towards the end of therapy, we will meet less frequently, providing you with opportunity to build on and put into practice what you have learned in therapy. Before therapy finishes we will discuss a plan or 'blueprint' to help you continue to practise and develop your skills, even after the sessions have finished. This makes it less likely that your symptoms or problems will return.