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We will, first of all, do an intake assessment to better understand your symptoms/thoughts/feelings/behaviours, and get a sense of the contextual factors impacting your problem. We will ask you questions about predisposing factors (what went on earlier in life), precipitating factors (why did this problem happen now? what happened to trigger you?), perpetuating factors (what keeps your symptoms from stopping once they've  begun). and your protective factors (what generally helps you, who generally helps you, when/why/where do they help? What else is a strength for you now? We will help you reflect of the physical, psychological, social, economic, familial, and any other factors that are/or are not helpful to reduce or increase your symptoms and current state?. Having done that, we will conceptualize/formulate your problem/issue/symptoms, checking with you every step of the way to ensure that we are correctly understanding the information you have provided. Then, we will share this formulation with you to ensure that you and whichever of us you are working with are on the same page so far. Then we will help you come up with your overall goal for therapy (generally completed by reaching many smaller goals along the way) and the steps required to help you achieve your goal.  This is a useful process because it helps you and the therapist in remaining accountable for your respective roles in your treatment. Your goal should make sense to you, and will become the Road Map to achieving your goal.