Please advise: I would like to start therapy, but I don't know what to say

I have a lot to unload, and I don't know where to begin or what I should and shouldn't tell a therapist or anything like that. I don't want to say a bunch of stuff and immediately get misunderstood for communicating poorly/unexpectedly. I want to make the right impression so that my experience with the therapist doesn't become a shitshow that I can't recover from.

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lovelywarpedlemon

You can always get multiple opinions from people, everyone will have a different perspective; therapists are individuals despite operating within the same general guidelines for client treatment and diagnosis. The whole point of therapy is really about you working through your own thoughts with a professional (hopefully) there to offer some practical tools to improve your habits. Opening up completely while directing the conversation to your preferred topics is more likely to offer tangible results. The work is really on you, not just in therapy but every day, making choices towards improvement... Also, understand that modern therapy is quite limited due to our lack of knowledge of how the mind works. We're not really even sure how prescription drugs work.