When starting therapy, you may have a lot of questions running around your mind: “Do I need therapy?” “How long will it take to work?” “What will my first session look like?” or “What do I even talk about in therapy?”
One thing that might not be on your mind at the beginning of your therapy journey is, “How will I know when it’s time to end therapy?” This can be a difficult question to answer, but it's an important one to consider so you can be ready for the next step.
If you think it might be time to talk to your therapist about ending therapy, here are some guidelines to help you through the process.
Ending therapy can be hard
First, it’s important to acknowledge it can be hard to know when you're ready to end therapy.
You might not feel ready or might be afraid that if you leave care, you won’t be able to come back. Maybe you’re nervous to start taking what you learn in therapy to manage your mental health on your own. Or maybe you’re afraid of disappointing your therapist and don’t know how to bring it up.
All of these feelings are valid, and we encourage you to share them with your therapist. Your therapist might have some suggestions for how to make this transition easier, like switching to therapy every other week as a starting point.
Signs you’re ready to end therapy
Therapy is a great tool to help you learn strategies for managing your mental health symptoms — but you shouldn’t have to be in care forever.
Here are some signs that you might be ready to talk to your therapist about ending therapy:
- You’re feeling better and your mental health is no longer causing problems in your relationships, job, or physical health.
- You feel like you’ve reached your goals and have learned how to manage the challenges that brought you to therapy in the first place. If you find yourself more often telling your therapist about how a challenge arose and you managed it yourself — this is a sign you know what strategies work for you.
- You’re struggling to find things to talk about in therapy. If you’re feeling better enough that your symptoms no longer feel like they’re worth mentioning, you could be ready to graduate.
- Care might not be progressing all that well and you want to take a step back, or your needs have changed and your provider can no longer meet them. At Two Chairs, we know this happens sometimes, and we are prepared to identify alternative providers who can support you.
- Anything else. Whatever your reason may be, we encourage you to talk to your therapist about it.
If you’re a client at Two Chairs, you will also have the support of information you provide in your mental health check-in surveys that will help you and your therapist understand your progress and know if therapy is working. This way, the burden won’t be on you to bring up the conversation of ending care.
Preparing to “graduate” from therapy
Ending care isn’t as scary when you have a plan in place. At Two Chairs, we refer to ending therapy as “graduation” — or successfully completing care when you feel better and your goals are met.
When you’re ready to end care at Two Chairs, your therapist will help prepare you for life after therapy. You’ll review your goals and the progress you’ve made, and you’ll make a graduation plan. This can look like identifying skills you’ve learned, what strategies have worked for you, how to continue to practice, and signs that you might need to return to therapy at some point as well as a plan for how to do it.
What if therapy didn’t “work”?
If you feel like you haven’t been getting better in therapy, know that you’re not alone: About a third of people don’t feel better after their experience in therapy. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get better or won’t get better if you try again.
If you’re a client at Two Chairs and you feel this way, it’s our job to make a referral to someone who might be better equipped to help you. We’ll support you throughout this process.
Deciding to go to therapy is a huge step, and ending care is no small feat either. Regardless of what your therapy journey has looked like, we hope you feel proud of your efforts to improve your life and feel empowered to start practicing what you’ve learned.
