Is this what counsellors usually ask?

[Plenanna]

I arranged phone counselling through my GP. They asked me to briefly explain my issues, then asked what do I hope to get out of counselling?

But I don’t know. If I knew how to fix my issues I wouldn’t have asked for counselling. I just want to not cry and feel depressed and anxious all the time. But apparently that isn’t specific enough.

Yes, I've been asked that before. With my agoraphobia I said I want to be able to leave my house alone without fear and panic.
When I needed help for PTSD I said I wanted to live a life where I wasn't afraid to answer my front door and didn't jump at every little thing.

If you have generalised depression and anxiety then you could say something like you want to get up on a morning and feel positive about the day ahead, or you want to replace anxiety with confidence so you can complete your goals in life. Hope that helps 💐

Yes that’s normal but I can understand you feel a bit thrown if you weren’t expecting it. Being specific is about you targeting exactly what the issues are and helping you identify how to fix them. They won’t expect you to have all the answers at the start. Maybe you could think about some of the triggers for anxiety and depression and how you wish things could be different. Things like ‘I’d like to learn to trust others enough to ask for help when I need it’ or ‘I want to be able to go into xyz scenario without feeling anxiety’. Well done for getting yourself to counselling, try to make it work for you by really engaging with it.

Well, that should be enough over the phone. They could ask you to expand on things at an appointment.

I'd have thought that would be enough for now!

IAPT therapist here. We always ask this at assessment because getting a sense of your priorities for therapy helps us decide which treatment pathway will be most beneficial to start you off on. Eg. If you have generalised anxiety and depression but your goals are around going out more often/challenging your self critical thoughts, we'd start off with depression work (which tackles behaviour activation and thought challenging).

I was just thrown when he asked what I expected to get out of counselling. Because I don’t actually know. My issues relate to my autism so I kind of feel hopeless because that can’t be fixed. When he asked that question I felt stupid for expecting to be helped, because I realised I was expecting the impossible. So I just said “yeah you’re right, I can’t get anything out of counselling because there’s nothing you can do about my autism”.

We talked for about 20 minutes and in the end he said he can’t really help me other than signposting me to the autism society. So he discharged me and told me to call the autism society and go back to my GP to see if they could offer a different type of support. So basically I got no help, again.