# What to Talk About in Therapy (Especially When You Don't Know Where to Start)

You are sitting in your therapist's office, or staring at the little video window on your laptop, and they ask how you want to use today's session. And your mind goes... blank.

Or you have a vague sense that something is off, but you cannot pin it down into words. Or you have so many things swirling around that you do not know where to start. Or everything feels fine right now and you wonder if you even have anything worth bringing up.

If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone, and you are not doing therapy wrong.

"I don't know what to talk about" is one of the most common experiences in therapy, especially for people who are newer to it, or who are in a quieter period between crises. It does not mean therapy is not working. It does not mean you have run out of things to work on. It usually means one of two things: either nothing feels urgent enough to justify the airtime, or something feels too close to say out loud yet.

Both of those are actually worth exploring.

This post is a practical guide for those moments, a set of prompts, categories, and gentle nudges to help you find your way into a session when you are not sure where to begin.

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## **First: "I Don't Know What to Say" Is Information**

Before we get to the list, it is worth pausing on the blankness itself, because your therapist can work with it.

When you cannot find words for what you are feeling, that is not a dead end. It is a starting point. Telling your therapist "I came in today and I genuinely don't know what I need from this session" is a completely valid opening. What often follows is a conversation about why it is hard to access, what the blankness feels like, and what might be sitting just underneath it.

Some of the most productive therapy sessions start from exactly that place. The not-knowing is not a problem to solve before you arrive. It is something you can bring in as it is.

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## **Topics to Bring Into Therapy, by Category**

If you want something more concrete to work with, here are the areas that tend to yield the richest conversations in therapy. You do not need to work through all of them, just notice which one catches your attention.

### **How You Have Been Feeling Lately**

The most obvious starting place, and still one of the most useful. Not the dramatic moments, but the texture of your days. Ask yourself:

*   What has my general emotional tone been this week?
    
*   Have I felt more anxious, more flat, more irritable than usual?
    
*   Was there a moment, even a small one, where I felt genuinely okay? What was happening then?
    

You do not need a neat summary. "I've felt kind of low but I can't explain why" is a perfectly good thing to say. Your therapist's job is to help you figure out the why, not to receive a polished report.

### **A Relationship That's Been On Your Mind**

Relationships, with partners, parents, friends, colleagues, even acquaintances, are one of the richest sources of therapeutic material, because they tend to activate our deepest patterns. Consider:

*   Is there someone I have been thinking about more than usual?
    
*   Is there a conversation I have been avoiding, or one that did not go the way I wanted?
    
*   Is there a relationship where I keep having the same argument or the same dynamic, no matter how hard I try?
    

You do not have to have a "problem" with someone to talk about them in therapy. Sometimes the fact that you keep thinking about a person is enough.

### **Something You Have Been Avoiding**

This one is harder, but often the most valuable. The things we avoid thinking about tend to have the most energy stored in them. If there is a topic that makes you want to skip past this section, that is probably worth noticing.

Ask yourself: is there something I have never brought up in therapy because it feels too embarrassing, too complicated, or too raw? Even just naming it to your therapist, without going into detail, can crack something open. You might say: "There's something I've been avoiding talking about and I'm not sure I'm ready, but I want you to know it exists."

That is enough to start.

### **A Pattern You Keep Noticing**

Patterns are where therapy does its deepest work. Not the isolated incidents, but the things that keep happening across different relationships, different jobs, different stages of your life. For example:

*   Do you consistently feel overlooked, even when there is no clear reason to?
    
*   Do you tend to pull away from people when you most need connection?
    
*   Do you find it hard to finish things, make decisions, or ask for help?
    
*   Do you often feel responsible for other people's emotions?
    

If something on that list sparked a flicker of recognition, it is worth bringing in. These patterns usually have roots, in early experiences, in the ways we learned to cope, and therapy is one of the few places equipped to actually trace them.

### **Something From Your Past That Still Feels Present**

You do not have to be dealing with a dramatic trauma to talk about the past in therapy. The quieter stuff, the family dynamics, the messages you absorbed about who you were supposed to be, the losses that never got properly grieved, shapes how you move through your life in ways that are easy to underestimate.

If there is something from your history that keeps surfacing in unexpected moments, or that you have never quite made sense of, therapy is exactly the right place for it.

### **Your Goals, or the Absence of Them**

Therapy is not only for pain management. It is also for figuring out what you actually want, from your relationships, your work, your life. If you have been feeling directionless, stuck, or like you are just going through the motions, that is rich material.

Equally, if you have goals you care about but keep self-sabotaging, or dreams you have been putting off for reasons you cannot fully articulate, that is worth exploring too. Sometimes the thing stopping us is not lack of motivation. It is something else entirely, and therapy can help find it.

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## **What to Do When Something Feels Too Hard to Say**

There are things that are genuinely difficult to voice in therapy, not because you do not want to talk about them, but because putting them into words feels exposing, or shameful, or like it will make them too real.

A few things that help:

**Write it down first.** Sometimes getting words on paper, even rough, incomplete ones, lowers the barrier enough to say it out loud. You can write it in a journal, in a notes app, or in a mood tracking tool. You do not have to read it to your therapist; having written it often makes it easier to say.

**Start with the meta-level.** Instead of saying the hard thing directly, say: "There's something I want to talk about but I'm nervous to bring it up." Most therapists will meet that with curiosity rather than pressure. It gets you into the conversation without having to jump straight to the deep end.

**Remember that your therapist has heard a lot.** Whatever it is, it is very unlikely to shock them, change how they see you, or cause harm. Therapists are trained specifically to hold difficult material without judgment. The thing you are most afraid to say is almost always the thing most worth saying.

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## **How Tracking Your Week Gives You Natural Material**

One of the quietest but most practical benefits of mood tracking between sessions is that it solves the "I don't know what to talk about" problem almost entirely.

When you check in with yourself daily, even briefly, you build a record of your week that is far more honest than memory alone. You arrive at your session knowing which days were hard, what seemed to trigger a shift, what helped and what did not. You have specific moments to reference, rather than a vague impression of how things went.

That specificity changes everything. Instead of starting with "I've been kind of anxious," you can say: "I noticed I felt most anxious on Tuesday and Wednesday, both days I had a lot of back-to-back calls and didn't leave the house. I'm wondering if isolation plays more of a role than I'd thought." That is a conversation your therapist can go deep on.

**Between Sessions** is built to make this kind of reflection easy and sustainable. The app's daily check-ins and gentle prompts help you stay connected to your emotional life between appointments, so you always have something real to bring in, even on the weeks when everything feels fine on the surface.

[*Start tracking between sessions at*](https://betweensessions.online/) [*betweensessions.online*](http://betweensessions.online)

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## **A Shortlist to Screenshot or Save**

If you want something quick to reference before your next session, here are ten prompts worth keeping:

1.  How have I been feeling in my body this week?
    
2.  Is there a relationship that has been taking up mental space?
    
3.  What am I most worried about right now?
    
4.  Is there something I have been avoiding, in my life or in therapy?
    
5.  Have I noticed any patterns in my mood or reactions lately?
    
6.  Is there something from my past that has been surfacing unexpectedly?
    
7.  What do I most want to feel differently about six months from now?
    
8.  Have I been taking care of myself? If not, what's getting in the way?
    
9.  Is there something I want my therapist to know that I haven't said yet?
    
10.  What would feel like a win from today's session?
     

You do not need to answer all ten. Read through the list and trust whatever pulls at you. That is probably where you need to go.

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## **A Note to Close With**

Therapy is not a performance. You are not there to impress anyone, to have perfectly articulated insights, or to arrive with a tidy agenda. You are there to be honest about your inner life, and honesty is messy, slow, and sometimes starts with "I don't really know where to begin."

The most important thing is that you show up. Everything else can be figured out from there.

And if you want a little help figuring it out between sessions, tracking your moods, noticing your patterns, and arriving at every appointment a little more prepared, [**Between Sessions**](https://betweensessions.online/) was designed for exactly that.

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*This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of a qualified mental health professional with any questions you may have.*