Why don’t you offer a free one hour consultation? Some practitioners in Bristol do?

You may be wondering whether you should be concerned or suspicious that I don’t offer a free one hour initial consultation whilst some others in the Bristol area do. I would like to offer you a fuller explanation to put your mind at rest.  

I offered a free one hour consultation in the consulting room for over six years of full time practice. My take-up rate following a consultation is genuinely about 95%. That should tell you straight away that in principle I am committed to operating with complete transparency. If you are troubled with an anxiety related difficulty, I genuinely expect to be able to help you. In practice however there are a number of reasons why that hourly consultation system became more of a hindrance than a help. In the interest of keeping this brief, here are some of the reasons why I switched to a telephone consultation followed by a working first session: - 

• A high percentage of the people I see want some help (a working session) right away. This has been expressed to me by many clients.

• Many difficulties can be addressed in two to three sessions or so (nail-biting, simple phobias etc). In these cases a full hour consultation really is simply unnecessary and just makes an extra unnecessary journey for the client.  

• Most of what I would usually have told you in a one hour consultation I can communicate to you with a written document which I now give to all clients prior to our first session.

• 20 minutes on the phone is adequate to help you get a “feel” for who I am and what I can offer you in the way of help. Booking an appointment remains non-obligatory so you still get the opportunity to make sure you are fully comfortable before committing to treatment.

• I can now screen out the insincere and the misdirected. Sadly, offering a free one hour consultation has proven an invitation in the past to a small number of people who have abused the generosity in various ways.

• Phone consultations free up consulting room time which has now been re-distributed not as more sessions or less hours but as more time between sessions. This benefits clients when as is sometimes the case it is necessary to over-run the standard hour session time. It also means your therapist (me) is fresh and not exhausted!

• I will always make sure you feel completely comfortable before committing to a booking (yes even if it takes longer than 20 minutes…I’m not minute counting!) If you have any special requests (such as visiting the practice first) then please feel free to ask and if I can reasonably oblige I will.

In practice I am not really offering any less than I ever have. I am still offering almost a free hour in total (the phone consultation + a longer first session charged at hourly rate) and certainly you receive the same information and reassurances overall. It is just packaged differently in the interests of streamlining the process. I hope you will see here a balanced approach to offering you a quality service with a more streamlined way of working.