How To Break Up With Your Therapist...The Right Way

 ruth: I have had six therapists over 20 years, and I’ve only officially parted ways with one of them. For all I know, I could be racking up bills for years of no-shows, mostly because I’ve been too chicken sh*t to have the awkward convo with someone who knew everything about me. The one relationship I did end, I handled with grace (I think), after three sessions left me feeling more confused about a situation than when I’d started.

Turns out, I likely botched that moment too. “We recommend six to eight sessions with a clinician to experience some meaningful benefit,” says Greg Lamont, clinical director at Juniper Mountain Counseling in Bend, Oregon, noting that there’s research to support this timeline. “In the first few sessions, you’re really just getting into the surface and becoming comfortable with being vulnerable. It takes time before real and noticeable changes start to take effect.”

And those changes might be way less obvious than you’d think. “The most typical thing in the world is for human beings to normalize the present, making it difficult to notice when growth has occurred,” says Lamont. According to him, there are signs that will tell you that your therapy is actually doing you good.

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