Why a good therapist asks more than tells
Most people arrive at their first therapy session half expecting to be told what’s wrong with them and what to do. Some are hoping for it. So it can be surprising when the psychologist mostly asks questions, and even more surprising when one of those questions makes you see something you have been circling for years.
The American psychologist Christine Padesky, co-author of the bestselling CBT workbook Mind Over Mood, wrote one of the most influential papers on why this matters. She noticed that many therapists use questions to lead clients towards an answer the therapist has already decided on, which she called the “one-two-three-aha” approach. It looks like curiosity but it is really persuasion. What she argued for instead was guided discovery: questions asked with genuine curiosity and no fixed destination, so the conclusion is yours. Her rule for therapists was blunt: “If you are not truly curious to know the answer, don’t ask the question.”
The reason this matters is durability. An insight someone else hands you tends to fade when you leave the room. One you arrive at yourself, from your own experience, is still there at 3am when your old way of thinking comes back. It also teaches you how to question your own thoughts, which is what protects against things returning after therapy ends.
In a first session with me, that means we will spend most of the time understanding what brings you here, what you’ve tried, and what you’d like to be different. I’ll ask a lot of questions. You don’t need to have the answers or know which therapy you want. By the end, we’ll usually have a first sketch of what is going on and a sense of whether working together makes sense.
If you’ve been putting off a first appointment because you’re not sure what you’d say, you don’t need a script. Curiosity is my job. Get in touch to book a free 15-minute call.