Counselling - first session

[saltedcashewnut]

I have to call to arrange a 'triage appointment' which is 30 minutes long and is finding out a bit about me to see what kind of support is most appropriate.
But the thing is - I don't know where to start in explaining my problems. Everything is so tangled up, I feel like I'm going to miss things out, or that my worries will seem trivial. At the most basic level I feel sad and unhappy - but I can't imagine expressing the reasons for that to someone coherently.
How does it work? Will the counsellor mostly be asking me questions or will I be expected to give a monologue explaining why I am there?

Write it all down so that you don't feel pressurised when you're there and forget stuff. You can even give what you wrote to the therapist to read. They will not feel your worries are trivial or that your reasons are inadequate. One doesn't need a reason to be depressed, it's an illness that can strike anybody. Good luck.

Thank you both. I might try to write some things down to try and make sense of things myself, before I get there. I suppose my main worry is - it's taken me so long to get to this point of seeking help, I don't want them to say 'this isn't the place for you because of xyz, you need to do this instead'.

The purpose of the meeting is to decide what sort of help you need, so they definitely won't say that.