Single Session Counselling

Life happens without relent, sometimes, presenting you with complicated problems that leave you at a crossroads. Sometimes, you need someone to talk to while you’re teetering on the verge of a spiral. Single Session Counselling provides a non-judgemental space with objective assistance to facilitate clarity. It maximises what may be the first or only counselling session for clients, focusing on one presenting issue, and working through it with the client. Supported by a litany of research, Single Session Counselling can be helpful in situations of “stuckness”. It is an efficient entry point into the healing process to test the waters of therapeutic work.

What is Single Session Counselling?

Single Session Counselling is designed with intention to target present problems and achieve meaningful outcomes within a structured session. It is brief, and oriented around specific goals. It serves as a framework that emphasises instantaneity, its discerning point from traditional therapy. Furthermore, it opens up the option of cost-effective mental healthcare for public access, for those who can’t commit to the cost of longer-term psychotherapy.

Within a 90 minute session, the therapist focuses on the client’s needs and shapes the session around them, with the understanding that there will be no follow-up session. The therapist may address one specific issue to work through during this session, with the intention to offer clarity to the client.

What to expect in Single Session Therapy at Incontact Counselling

• Time efficiency. Within 90 minutes with your preferred therapist, the therapist will understand your story, focusing on the most important aspects of your story, beginning with the parts that are affecting you most.
• You will build a meaningful and safe relationship with the therapist within this timeframe, with no expectation of a second session.
• A listening ear, and someone who can help create hope.
• A solution-focused based therapy that hopefully finds you immediate relief.
• Identification of the problems in your present life, with focus on one issue.
• A collaborative effort to develop an active plan to resolve these problems in a satisfying manner.
• A therapist who will help you identify resources available to you that can assist in your healing journey.
• Gain strategies to help manage the issue.

At the end of the 90 minute session, the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client ends there, as the client is prepared and assumed to have the tools to support themselves independently. However, that is not to say that the individual is barred from another session, should they wish to return for one.

Single Session Counselling can be helpful to:

• Difficulty adjusting to life transitions
• Decision making
• Intrapsychic difficulties
• Interpersonal conflicts
• A recent trigger

Rapid changes happen in life. Often, some of these changes can be difficult to adapt to. Transitions such as moving to a new place, career changes, gaining a new family member, or most notably a pandemic, can be emotionally taxing and difficult to navigate. In example, with the recent pandemic, many lives were overturned. Drastic change left a craterous psychological impact globally, and with the scramble to shift back and forth between lifestyles during the endemic stage, most people faced issues adjusting. Failure to adapt may leave one in distress, which may have a ripple effect on their social relationships, self-care habits, and work life.

Secondarily, life also throws us curveballs in which hard decisions need to be made, and the stage of ambivalence is where the stress begins. Circularly, stress often impacts decision making skills on a behavioural and neural level. Everyday, we face a multiplex of decisions to make, some of them much more difficult than others to navigate, which may induce feelings of “stuckness”. Stress management is important to safeguarding psychological health, something that can be built upon with some guidance.

Though deeper, more continuous work could be done to ensure healing, a single session reaps multiple benefits such as motivating change rapidly, supplying the client with the awareness and tools for psychological, cognitive and behavioural improvement, and a safe place to land for the time being.

Within one session, single session counselling strives to identify and work towards the client’s goal. There is no one modality that the therapist may use to facilitate hope and change. They may employ a variety of therapeutic techniques such as behavioural action, cognitive behavioural therapy, solution-focused therapy and mindfulness based interventions. Research has reflected that therapeutic strategies and modalities employed during single session counselling focus on practical coping skills, preparing the client for independent situation management (Kim, Ryu & Chibanda, 2023). These skills may include linking activity-based goals to essential life values, reframing or gaining awareness of certain thought patterns, practising mindfulness in the face of difficulties, and leveraging positive coping strategies and personal resources to ease their distress. These skills are valuable to setting an individual up for a clearer path through difficult situations, helping them cope in the meantime.

While Single Session Therapy is not a means of diagnosing mental health issues, it is a great launch-point to start the healing process and to understand your own needs better. Through single session counselling, you may be able to get referrals to proper medical professionals to help understand more complex issues and work through them with other appropriate medical and therapeutic resources. However, single session counselling is a valuable resource for accessible and cost-conscious mental healthcare. For some, it could be a gateway to opening up to the idea of long-term therapy.