How to End Therapy
I don't typically encourage clients to stay in therapy indefinitely. There are some potential problems with therapy going on too long once goals are met: therapy can lose it's effectiveness if it becomes too routine; it has a significant cost, both in money and time; and, long-term therapy has the potential to encourage dependence on your therapist rather than help you build greater confidence in yourself. Therapy is a tool to be used in your self-improvement and mental health management, it should not necessarily become a lifestyle.
How to know you are nearing the end of therapy:
It's time to start planning for your last session when you successfully accomplish your goals for therapy and feel confident in your ability to continue this progress on your own. Because of this, it's important to keep your goals in mind and check in on your progress periodically throughout your therapy experience.
Don't end too early.
There is a well documented pattern in therapy: people often come to therapy overwhelmed and after a couple of sessions start to feel hopeful and in better spirits. This response is helpful and encouraging, however, please don't mistake it for the completion of your goals and end therapy too quickly! Make sure you see the actual desired outcomes before we wrap up.
Don't wait too long.
Perfection is not an attainable goal! Because you are human you will always have more room to grow, plan to end therapy when you've met your goals for therapy, NOT when you've reached perfection.
Here's an example of reaching your goals:
Let's say your goal was to improve your anxiety management, social life, and self-confidence. You might end therapy once you've seen yourself successfully manage your anxiety a number of times in different challenging situations, experience improvement in your relationships, and feel more comfortable taking risks you used to avoid. The benchmark would be seeing these improvements, not just having an idea of how to get there. Additionally, it would be unrealistic to wait until you never feel anxious again (as anxiety is an emotion we all feel at times).
There are other reasons you might end therapy, these include:
You can't afford the financial or time burden of therapy. Therapy costs time and money, if you are unable to continue for these reasons please let me know. We can either discuss a reduced fee, a change in frequency, or determine if pausing for a time is best.
You aren't progressing towards your goals. If, despite your best efforts, you don't feel you are making progress, we may need to adjust our approach, or it could be another therapist might be better for you. I won't take offense at this, I'm not the right fit for every client. Just let me know and I can provide referrals for other clinicians.
How to end therapy:
Once you’ve met your goals and are ready to end therapy, just let me know. Something like, "I think I'm close to reaching my goals for therapy, can we start planning for our last session?". Contrary to what some clients might fear, I'm excited when clients are ready to stop sessions. It usually means we accomplished what we set out to do!
Once we plan to end your therapy we'll have a last session to go over your experience, your progress on your goals, and how to keep progressing on your own. The last session is also a chance for us to more formally wrap up our work together and provides needed closure for the therapy relationship.
If you are worried about not having ongoing access to therapy remember that I offer check-in appointments as needed to all of my previous clients. It is quite normal to end a round of therapy and return months or years later when a new (or old) challenge emerges. Like I said before, therapy is a tool, and you can use it whenever it's needed.