The most common question we get before a first booking is not really about therapy at all. It is some version of "what do I actually have to do." So here is the honest, unglamorous answer: not much, and nothing you have not already done by picking up the phone or filling in the online form.

A short intake form goes out before you arrive, asking for your name, contact details and a rough sentence or two about what you would like to talk about. That is it. There is no assessment battery to complete beforehand, no history to write out in full, no diagnostic checklist. Whatever you write there is a starting point for the conversation, not a test you can get wrong.

Arriving

We ask people to arrive about five minutes early, mostly so the fifty minutes booked can actually be fifty minutes used rather than eating into settling-in time. The waiting area on Regatta Point Lane is small on purpose, two chairs rather than a shared open room, because the last thing anyone wants before a first session is to sit across from a stranger while working up the nerve to walk in.

If you are coming by telehealth instead, the same five-minute rule applies differently: log in early enough to check your camera and microphone are working, so the first few minutes of the actual session are not spent troubleshooting audio.

The session itself

You will be seeing the psychologist you continue with, not a separate intake worker who hands you off afterwards. Alison, Daniel or Tessa will ask what has brought you in, a bit of relevant background, and what you are hoping will be different. There is no clipboard of questions read out in order; it is a conversation, and it goes wherever the actual answer takes it.

Nobody takes notes in front of you during the session itself. Whatever is written down happens afterwards, once you have left the room, which is a small thing that more than one client has said made a real difference to how much they said.

What you leave with

By the end of the fifty minutes, you will have a plain-language plan: roughly how often future sessions might make sense, which therapeutic approach fits what you have described, and whether it is worth arranging a Mental Health Treatment Plan referral from your GP before the next visit. None of this is decided for you without discussion, and none of it commits you to a fixed number of future sessions.

If you want a follow-up booked, it happens before you leave, at reception or on the spot for a telehealth session. If you would rather go away and think about it first, that is entirely fine too; nobody is chasing anyone for a second booking.

The honest bit

A first session will not fix anything by itself, and we will not tell you it does. What it reliably does is turn a vague sense that something needs attention into a specific, plain-language plan for what to do about it, with a person who has actually read your file before you sat down. For a lot of people, that alone is the hardest part done.