When to End Therapy: Clear Signs You're Ready

So when do we know we're ready to stop doing therapy? I mean, what's the ideal amount of sessions? Should people be in therapy forever? I'm Evan, your resident mental health and addiction therapist. And in this video, I'm going to give you my three signs that you may be ready to move on from therapy, or at least step down. The first sign may be a reduced sense of urgency. For example, maybe you came into therapy in a state of crisis, you were feeling overwhelmed, and you were brimming with with things to talk about with your therapist.

You may have felt like there was not enough time in that session to cover everything. However, over time, you start to notice that you may be trying to grasp at things to talk about that over time in solving your problems. That same sense of urgency isn't there, that maybe you got through some of those primary issues? Then in that case, it may be time to step down or change focus a bit. Number two is in that same vein, where you may have reached all the goals in your treatment plan. Proper therapy requires you and your therapist to agree on a treatment plan with a set of goals.

Now, often you do this in the first three sessions. You set it and forget it. However, I find that when clients and I start running out of things to talk about, or they're really starting to feel better, that we go back and look at that original treatment plan to see how they feel their progress is, and if we need to step down or again, discontinue. The fact is, it's often seen as unethical to continue doing therapy, especially if it's done done with insurance. If there's really no aim, there's no target.

We're just talking, but not really solving any problems. Number three is if you're starting to feel a disconnect. Perhaps at the beginning you really had a close relationship with your therapist. You really felt like they were helping solve your problems. But over time, you're just feeling a sense of disconnect. Perhaps they're not specializing in the area that you're now wanting to work on. This is a good time to have that discussion with your therapist, even though it may be uncomfortable because.

Because maybe you could reset that relationship. However, it may just be time to find someone new, someone who has a different perspective. For example, a coach may be really good, but if the team is no longer doing well, they may benefit from bringing a new coach in, and that coach could be better for a different team. So, in conclusion, therapy is not a one size fits all process. Everybody comes in with different needs some clients I see feel a lot better in five to eight sessions and that's all they needed for the given issue they had now there are other people who benefit from doing therapy ongoing and that's okay as well so I like to think of therapy like a mental and emotional massage for example, you may go get a massage due to an injury and when you start feeling better you don't feel the need to go.

However for some people they have ongoing issues and doing regular massages makes them feel better or they're just going in for relaxation and stress reduction. Either way it's okay in the end it's okay to listen to your intuition if you're ready to step down or move on. And remember you can always go back to therapy maybe even with the same therapist later on I've had so many clients come back to me years later in different phases of their life and it's been really rewarding so remember, in the end therapy is about you so do what feels right for.