When Do You End Therapy?

Good therapy begins with the end in mind. We therapists want to “work ourselves out of a job” – we want you to experience healing and growth to the point that therapy is no longer needed. One of the priorities of your first session with your therapist is to identify your goals and hopes for coming to counseling and to create a treatment plan for getting there. This plan helps guide you and your therapist’s time together, while making room for updates and changes along the way. But how do you really know you are done with therapy?

Good therapy begins with the end in mind.

Just as there are many reasons people come to therapy, so too there are many ways to know you are done. The most obvious would be that you have met your therapeutic goals. Perhaps you have learned and successfully used healthy coping skills to the point where they have become a part of your life, at least more days than not. This may also mean any mental health symptoms you were experiencing – sleeplessness, loss of energy, panic, and so on – have lessened or are managed well with those healthy coping skills.

Part of what makes it possible to accomplish these goals is a growth in self-awareness. After all, self-awareness opens the door to the possibility of change, and we can mature and grow where we have previously been stuck. At the end of therapy, you hopefully will be able to identify triggers and underlying causes of your anxiety or depression or other symptoms. You can regulate your responses to those triggers in healthier ways. Perhaps this means you have explored how your early relationships impact the way you relate now and changed unhealthy patterns, or you have found how the trauma you experienced no longer has the final say on who you truly are. You have grieved, and while the grief is still there, there is more space for life around it. There is a greater sense of clarity and connection to who you really are, and you are learning to relate in new and healthier ways to yourself and others – with more compassion, curiosity, and courage (google qualities of the IFS self!).

Finally, just because it is time to end therapy, doesn’t mean it is time to stop growing. We as humans are (hopefully) continually maturing. Some people continue therapy once every 4-6 weeks for maintenance and self-care. Others come back in different seasons of life. And others continue on in other avenues of healing with coaches, mentors, and their community. One question I love to ask with clients at the end of counseling is where they want to continue to grow and heal, as well as the places and people they have that would support them and their ongoing journey.

It can be bittersweet to end therapy for both therapist and client. Bitter because it has been a place where you have vulnerably shared your story with someone who cares. And truly sweet because you are now more free to be the person you were made to be.

Toward wholeness,

Bevin Dunn