How to Know if You Should End Therapy

When you have found a great therapist and how have walked together along your healing journey, it can be hard to know when (or if?) you should end therapy. This is ultimately an individual decision and should involve collaborative discussions with your therapist about where what your needs are. Here a few guidelines to help with the process of making this decision:

1.If you have addressed the concerns you came to therapy to address.

This doesn’t mean that you have achieved psychological perfection and everything you can ever work on is resolved, but if you have done some hard work and made some gains it can be helpful to take a break from the journey of growth, let the changes integrate into your life, and enjoy yourself! Growth is life-long so there is plenty of time for the next chapter of healing.

2. If your therapist & you are feeling satisfied with your symptom management/ level of functioning.

Again, it’s not about achieving perfection here. We will all have mental health & sexual health struggles in our life. Leaving therapy does not mean that symptoms will no longer be present, it just means you are equipped with the knowledge, tools, practice and insight, to be able to manage them.

3. If you have lost motivation/time/energy to work on therapy in a meaningful way.

Therapy is a lot of effort and change is hard! In order to get good therapeutic gains, consistent therapy attendance and effort outside of therapy is required. There can be lots of internal or external barriers to change and it’s worth exploring all of this in therapy before you decide to leave. But ultimately, if it's not the right time for you, it is worth conserving your energy and coming back when you are ready.

4. If you would like to focus on different issues, and think that a different therapeutic approach/therapist might be helpful with this.

There are many effective therapeutic approaches and some are more useful for particular presenting issues. It can be helpful to discuss alternative approaches and referrals with your psychologist because they may be able to make recommendations. There are also many effective therapists! Even if you have found a great one, there can be many unanticipated benefits from engaging with alternative perspectives and forming a new therapeutic connection.