Most people who book a first call with me have been thinking about it for months. The delay is rarely about money or time. It's about not knowing what happens on the other side of the screen, and not wanting to be the person who cries at a stranger in the first ten minutes.
So here is what happens. All of it, including the parts that are less dramatic than you fear.
First, the name
When we talk about the psychotherapeutic modality that I am trained in Positive Psychotherapy, the word "positive" doesn't mean cheerful, and it doesn't mean I'll tell you to think positively. The word comes from the Latin positum, which means what is actually there, the given. The method was developed by Nossrat Peseschkian, an Iranian-born psychiatrist working in Germany from the late 1960s, and its starting point is that a person who comes to therapy is not a collection of defects. They are someone with capabilities that have gone out of balance, or that have never had a chance to be used.
That sounds like a slogan until you see it in practice. In practice it means that when you tell me you can't stop worrying, my first question isn't "what's wrong with you" but "what is this worry good at, and where else could that skill go". A worrier is usually a person with a strong capacity for foresight and responsibility. That's a real asset - the plus of the deficit.
Sessions are 50 minutes
I work online only at the moment, in English and Bulgarian, with clients across Bulgaria and the rest of Europe (sometimes beyond , if the time difference allows). I have worked with many clients who are living outside their home country, which shapes how I work. Positive Psychotherapy was built as a transcultural method from the start; Peseschkian was a foreigner in Germany and it shows in the approach. Questions like "what did your family consider polite, and what does this country consider polite" are not small talk here. They're shaping our choices, behaviour and state of being.
You need a quiet room, a stable connection and a door you can close. Headphones help. People sometimes apologise for the background, the child, the cat. There's no need. I've done sessions with clients sitting in parked cars because it was the only private place they had and it worked.
The five stages
The method has a structure, and I'll tell you where we are in it, because I think people do better when they can see the map.
Observation and distancing comes first. You describe what's happening as precisely as you can, and we take a step back from it together. What exactly happens on a bad day, in what order, and what do you do about it. Most people have never told the story slowly. Doing that already changes something.
Then an inventory. We look at your life across four areas: body, work, relationships, and meaning or future. We look at what Peseschkian called the actual capabilities, things like punctuality, orderliness, patience, trust, and where you learned your particular weighting of them. The inventory is not a list of faults, but a bag of gems.
Situational encouragement is the third stage and it's the one people find surprising. We spend time on what works. On the capability you've been using without noticing, on the week that went slightly better and why. This isn't cheerleading. Change gets built on whatever is already standing, and you have to know what that is before you can build on it.
Verbalisation is where the harder conversations happen. With me, and then increasingly with the people in your life. Saying the thing you've been managing around. Often this is where the real subject of therapy appears, and it's usually not the one from the first call.
Broadening of goals is last. Once the presenting problem has loosened, we look at what you want the freed up energy to go towards. New goals, old ones you'd shelved, an area of the balance model that has been running on empty for years.
Stories, and why I use them
Peseschkian used Middle Eastern parables in therapy, and I've kept the habit, though I'll use myths, Bulgarian folk stories or a scene from a film just as readily. There's an old story about several people describing an elephant in a dark room by touch: one feels a leg and says it's a pillar, one feels an ear and says it's a fan. Each is right about their piece.
I might tell that story to someone who is certain their partner is being cold, when what I'm hearing sounds like a partner who is frightened. A story lets you consider a different reading without being told you're wrong. It's a gentler instrument than an interpretation, and it tends to stay with people longer.
How long it takes
There's no fixed number of sessions in psychotherapy. The work moves at your pace, not mine. Some people come for a handful of sessions around one clear problem: a decision, a specific conflict, a panic that started three months ago. Others stay longer, because the thing they brought turned out to be attached to something older. Neither is better. It depends on you and what you're carrying.
After the first few sessions, I'll share how I see the work so far, and we'll keep checking in on it together. You will never be in therapy without knowing why you're still there.
When to end is something we decide together. And you can always stop. I'd rather you told me why, because endings are useful information, for me, but more so for you.
What it isn't
I don't sit in silence while you free associate. I ask a lot of questions and I'll offer my understanding when appropriate. There are no homework grades, though I will often suggest something to try between sessions. And you don't have to perform being unwell to justify the appointment. Some of the most productive sessions I've had were with people who said "this week was actually fine" and then we spent fifty minutes finding out why.
If you're ready, or almost
If you're not sure whether what you're carrying is "serious enough" for therapy, that question is itself a good reason to have the call. Almost everyone asks it. The answer is almost always yes.
Todor S. Simeonov is a clinical psychologist and certified Positive Psychotherapist (WAPP, European Certificate of Psychotherapy). He works online in English with individuals and couples. More about him or read about individual therapy.
