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The first thing to point out, of course, is that I’m a mere layman, and I would not wish to mislead you by presuming to anticipate what your spiritual father may ask of you during confession itself.
Different confessors have different “styles”, reflecting their specific experiences, strengths, and intuitions, and in a sense the better the confessor the less susceptible will his expectations and methods be to a set of rules. At the top end of the scale is the father who can read your mind and heart, so that you don’t have to say anything. I’m going to assume your confessor doesn’t offer these advantages, or else you wouldn’t be asking me what to do!
In any event, with these important disclaimers firmly in place, my general advice to people is that they make a point of stating their sins as succinctly and dispassionately as possible: “I lied”, “I engaged in sexual fantasy”, “I was angry”, “I procrastinated”. Unless you’re specifically asked to elaborate, you needn’t talk about context or occasion, and you certainly don’t need to record the date or time of your sins. Attention to unnecessary detail tends to give a kind of “color” and “solidity” to the sins, and as a result it can be more difficult to see through to their causes and thus to dispel the energy that caused them.
I would definitely guard against the tendency which some people have—and which some priests even encourage, I fear—to express remorse in a strongly emotional way, for this can lead to a kind of “appropriation” of the sins, as if they defined the true Self. It is of course perfectly appropriate, and in any case inevitable, to feel embarrassed and stupid in regard to what one has thought or done. But these feelings ought not to be artificially strengthened.
On the other hand, those who may use examples of such emotionalism to justify themselves in supposing that metaphysicians are somehow beyond the need for this sacrament are entirely, and dangerously, mistaken. On the contrary, there is a very important alchemy in confession that can be most advantageous for inward spiritual work, and it would certainly be stupid not to take advantage of it. Schuon puts it this way:
“When virtue reaches the innermost regions of the soul, it gives rise to illumination; when the wall of a darkened room is broken, light cannot fail to enter. Complete virtue is the elimination of everything that constitutes an obstacle to gnosis and love.
“Actions are not only superficial manifestations of the individual but also criteria of his heart, hence of his essence and of his knowledge or ignorance. To watch over one’s actions is therefore not only an individual preoccupation; in some cases it is also a pursuit of purity of heart for the sake of the knowledge of God.
“This confers on the theory of sin, on the examination of conscience, and on penitence a significance that goes further than any religious individualism, making them compatible with pure spirituality: in Muslim esoterism as in Christian mysticism, this strictly alchemical way of regarding actions, whether good or bad, goes hand in hand with selfless contemplation of God” (Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts [World Wisdom, 2007], 197).
I pray you avail yourself fully, and regularly, of the power of this alchemy.