I often hear my therapist say this in the end whenever I'm able to sit with him in the moment during our sessions. Away from therapy, I am always trying to find ways to distract myself (i.e., going on the phone, or be a workaholic) so I don't have to feel whatever intrusive or unpleasant thoughts come up; they're often overwhelming and once in a while, and they leave me distressed. Obviously, I couldn't distract myself with my phone in therapy, so sometimes we would sit in the silence and it would feel super awkward, because for me, the silence meant we were unproductive, and that we were not doing any of the good work together.

"Good work?" What does that mean???! I first thought. All I did was sat there, saying nothing.
It felt like a waste of time, for sure.

Fast forward to last week (after 3+ years of therapy, being out of work, and feeling alone and misunderstood in quarantine) when I had a lot of trouble communicating because I was recovering from the throes of a pretty bad depressive episode, so I just sat with him in the silence within the "virtual space" of our telehealth session. And for some reason, it felt OK to not talk at all, and I didn't feel so bad sitting there with him. Sure I still felt terrible, but at least I wasn't alone to feel what I was feeling, and comforting. And when he said, "Good work," I was able to accept it this time instead of questioning it, because instead of beating myself up about staying silent and thinking I was not doing enough to help myself, I just allowed it to be. By being able to accept the silence, I was also able to offer some self-compassion to myself from my very busy mind.

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I would encourage you to look back at your session and see if you were able to figure out on your own what your therapist meant by "good work." And while it's only been 3 sessions, how did you feel about what was discussed? Did you thought it was an overall good session? Maybe it was something he learned about you, or something you mentioned that you didn't realize was important? I think it's worth looking into it yourself.