The first core discernment counseling session one questions take about forty minutes or so. If you’ve taken a lot longer than that, you’re asking too many questions or giving to many empathetic reflections which may be encouraging the clients to give you more detail.
What I say in that scenario is we’re going to get more information as we go, but for now I’m just wondering if you could kind of crystallize what you’re saying here, and we’ll get more details later. I try to structure this. You do not want to be going longer than forty minutes on this time. On your end, you’re relating non-verbally, mostly, which is still a form of empathy and is felt as connecting by most clients.
You’ve learned how to think through who to talk to first in session one, so when finished with the optional question 5, you describe well what happened next in the section of the session.
Example: “I’m going to talk with each of you separately, and then we’ll come back together at the end. Then you say who you’d like to work with, or who you’re going to talk to next. “Susan, I’d like to begin with you.”
You do your nice hosting behavior, where the other person can sit and wait their turn, or where the bathrooms are or how the other spouse will signal it’s their turn if it’s an online platform and they aren’t in the same physical location.