Robin Hayes is a composite drawn from conversations with three therapists in our network. Names and identifying details have been changed; the substance of the answers is verbatim from the interviews.
The first phone call with a therapist is one of the strangest fifteen minutes in adult life. You are interviewing a stranger about whether they can be trusted with the parts of you that don't have language yet, and you have no rubric. Most people I talked to for this piece said they hung up from their first intake call and had no idea if it had gone well. So I asked Dr. Robin Hayes, who has been in private practice for fourteen years and has fielded thousands of these calls from the other side of the line, to walk me through what's actually supposed to happen — and what should make you put the phone down.
Q: Let's start basic. What is an intake call actually for?
A: It's a screen. On both sides. I'm trying to figure out if I'm the right person to help you, and you're trying to figure out if I'm someone you can stand to talk to every week. That's it. It's not the first session. I'm not going to do therapy on the phone, and if a therapist tries to, that's a little weird. Usually it's fifteen, twenty minutes. The goal is honestly just: should we book a first session, or should I refer you somewhere else.
Q: What should the person calling be paying attention to?
A: Their body, mostly. Are you tightening up while you talk to this person, or are you settling? People want me to give them a checklist and I get it, but the checklist isn't the thing. The thing is — do you feel like you can be slightly inarticulate with this person without them rushing in to fix it. Most people calling a therapist are stressed about calling a therapist, so a little tightness is normal. What you're listening for is whether it gets worse the longer they talk, or eases up.
The other thing — and this matters — is whether they ask anything specific about you, or whether they're just running through their script. A good intake call has at least one moment where the therapist follows something you said and asks more about it. If the whole call is them describing their practice and rates and their cancellation policy, you're being sold to. That's not the same as being met.
Q: And what should the therapist be paying attention to, on their end?
A: Whether I can actually help you. Specifically. I shouldn't be taking everyone who calls. If somebody calls and they're describing severe OCD and I haven't worked with severe OCD in eight years, I should be telling them that and pointing them to two people who actually do it. I'm also listening for what kind of treatment you've had before and how you talk about it. If every previous therapist was "terrible" or "didn't get me," I'm flagging that — not as your fault, but as something we'd need to talk about in the room. And I'm paying attention to whether you're calling because something specific is happening right now, or whether you've been thinking about therapy for two years and finally dialed.
Q: What's a yellow flag — something that should make you cautious, but isn't a deal-breaker?
A: A therapist who does most of the talking. A therapist who tells you, in the first ten minutes, exactly what's wrong with you. Anybody who promises an outcome — "I can help you feel better in six weeks" — that's a yellow flag bordering on a red one. Vagueness about money, also. You should know the rate, what the cancellation policy is, and whether they take insurance or provide superbills, by the end of the call. If you have to ask three times to get a number, pay attention to that.
I'd add one more, which is the opposite of what people expect. If the therapist feels too easy in the first call — like everything you say lands perfectly and they're nodding along to all of it — sometimes that's chemistry, and sometimes it's a therapist who's good at being agreeable and not very good at actually challenging you. Fit isn't just chemistry. Sometimes the therapist who feels a little too challenging on the first call is the one who'd actually do you the most good. I tell people that and they don't love hearing it.
Q: What's a red flag? Something to make you hang up.
A: A therapist who says something diagnostic about you that you didn't ask for, on a fifteen-minute phone call. A therapist who gets defensive when you ask a basic question — what their training is, whether they've worked with what you're bringing. A therapist who is rude to you, full stop. And — this should be obvious but it isn't always — anybody who is doing the call from a place that doesn't sound private. You're about to tell this person things. They should be somewhere they can hear you and you can hear them, alone.
Q: Is it OK to interview multiple therapists at the same time?
A: Yes. About a third of the people who call me are calling six or seven practitioners. That's fine, that's smart. I tell them to be in touch with what their gut says after each call, and I tell them not to wait too long between the call and the decision, because the body remembers in the first twenty-four hours and forgets after that. The only thing I'd push back on is calling so many people that the calls start blurring. Three is probably the right number. Seven is too many.
Q: Last one. Is the goal of the call to find someone you click with?
A: Sort of. The goal is to find someone you can be honest with. Those overlap, but they're not the same. Clicking is pleasant. Honesty is the actual ingredient. You can click with someone and never tell them the truth. Aim for the second one.
Robin and I talked for another twenty minutes after I'd stopped recording, mostly about a piece of advice they'd given a friend who was therapist-shopping last fall: "Don't make the decision after the first session. Make it on Wednesday." I asked why Wednesday. They said, because by Wednesday you've had two days to forget the performance of it, and what's left is what you actually felt.