You Should Be Seeing Your Therapist Less and Less, Over Time

If therapy is truly helping you, shouldn’t you be going less and less, over time?

Photo by: Ben White

I was perusing Twitter the other day when I stumbled upon a tweet that something to the degree of “I’ve been seeing my therapist for an hour each week for the past 8 years and can say it’s the best money I’ve ever spent.”

What confused me about this statement is that if therapy was truly helping you, wouldn’t you be going less and less, over time? So, I messaged this person and asked if they had ever been encouraged to come on a less frequent basis and to instead focus more time on any tools / resources their therapist had provided them with to help them with their mental health.

To my surprise, they had not. And after some reflection, they concluded that they had never really given the exercises any serious thought because they knew that their therapist would always be there for them, each week.

Imagine eating every day, but only getting to use the bathroom once a week, for an hour. That is how I view this situation. While going to the bathroom provides us with relief, it is something we should be doing multiple times, every day.

If you have been seeing your therapist for an extended period of time and they haven’t provided you with the tools to or encouraged you to begin weening yourself off, it’s time to reflect on how much this is actually helping you to be self-sustaining.

It’s important to recognize that therapists want to help you, but that they also need to make a living. And encouraging their clients to come on less frequent basis stands in direct opposition to that goal.