I can only speak from the lens of my personal life, private practice and how I navigate things with my clients - but know that other providers working from other theories and modalities navigate their sessions and treatment very differently.
So I definitely encourage you to check in with your prospective or current clinician and ask them some questions about this and their view on it. Whether it is during your consultation call before starting services with them or you have been seeing them for months or years. Could be helpful to know what the typical length of treatment is for an average client, etc.
Some providers believe that people should be in therapy forever - and others do not. I personally think that everyone should have access to affordable and accessible mental health care whenever they want it - if they want it. But that is with the understanding that I am a believer in mental health self work all year round. This may sometimes mean counseling is the mental health care we need and other times it is community or support groups or connection with something larger than ourselves, or being in nature, or doing body work, etc.
Specifically talking about counseling though, a lot of the work I do with my clients is getting them to a space to “be their own counselor” and building up the internal relationships within themselves with all sorts of different thoughts, feelings and sensations - so they are able to connect with them and eventually explore on their own similar to how we do in session.
My goal is to ultimately help my clients reach a point where they don’t need counseling anymore. They may still have personal work to do (who doesn’t), but they will have learned the the internal skills they need to act as their “own therapist” over time.
All while knowing their bodies and minds better so they can pick up on the signals it sends that let us know we are in a space of needing help from someone else again and cannot and should not be tackling this all alone. Maybe these signals lead us to start up counseling again - or maybe we do something else that allows us to put our mental wellness front of line.
Whatever it may be - if we are listening to our minds and bodies with a non judgmental, curious and compassionate ear - we are doing what we need to be doing.
Now I hear you out there being like - okay so how long will it take me to learn how to be my own counselor?! 1 month? 4 months? 1 year? 5 years? — HA! Get to the point lady and answer the damn question!
Well. There is no right or wrong path for you and and your relationship with counseling and the length of time you spent in it. It is all about meeting you and your lived experience with counseling with an open mind and exploring it without judgement or expectation to be or not be a certain way. All while knowing that your needs are constantly changing based on whats happening now in your life and what the internal framework for handling those happenings looks like.
Also - keep in mind that counseling is a very subjective experience and outside of the actual length of sessions - not much can be guaranteed or is for certain in what you will experience.
Frustrating - I know.
But the sooner we can notice the parts of us that think therapy “should look like this” or “last for this long” the more equipped we will be to update those and let them know that whatever is happening is where we need to be and what we need to be doing right now.
Okay so giving you a little bit of concrete info for my sessions with clients before dipping back into the length of counseling as a treatment -in regards to session length - the initial intake session will be 50 minutes long, and every session after that will be 50 minutes from start to finish.
Though some find it odd - 50 minutes is a common “therapy hour” and many clinicians will do this - but some will do 60 minute sessions and others offer 90 or 30 minute offerings as well.
Now back to talking about the therapeutic process (how long you go to therapy for) - this is what varies from person to person greatly. Many presenting concerns can be dealt with in a brief period of time, but this is not always the case. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to determine how long counseling will take.
I have some clients who I see on a weekly basis for 5 months - some I see bi weekly for 8 months and others that I see on a weekly or bi weekly basis for years.
Usually my clients start out with weekly sessions and then if they choose to change to bi weekly sessions or another level of frequency they can of course do that. The reason for starting out with weekly sessions and why this is most common in the world of therapy is for consistency and comfortability. We usually get to a point in counseling of sharing things with our therapists that we have never shared with anyone else before - and in order to do that we have to build trust, a relationship and feel comfortable in the room. A lot of the times what helps us do this is consistency and increased exposure to the normalization of having a safe and secure space to share our inner thoughts and feelings in a non judgmental environment.
If we only go to counseling once a month - totaling about 12 hrs a year - all parts of us may not get the opportunity to feel that safety and not be able to trust the therapeutic relationship and process.
When thinking of this in terms of other wellness activities it sometimes can click better. If we are wanting to get back into a running routine for our physical fitness and only go on a jog once a month - we likely aren’t going to be able to sustain much more distance than we did at the beginning. But if we got on a walk once a week and a jog every other week - we are giving our cardiovascular muscle a better chance at increasing their stamina by working out those muscle on a more frequent and consistent basis.
No right or wrong way to train for that race - but likely the person getting up and moving more frequently will meet their goals quicker. Translated to therapy - the individual committing to self growth and healing by prioritizing it and going consistently - MIGHT be able to accomplish goals in therapy at a different pace than others who only go once a month.
With all that being said - there still is not a great way to estimate how long you will be in therapy for. But reminder that it is always your choice and something that you and your provider should be openly exploring throughout your services. During the therapeutic process, you and your therapist should check in on your progress and this might be able to shine some light on the timeline it took to get from where you were and where you are now. With my clients I try to do this frequently just so we can check in on progress towards goals all while continually evaluating their want and need for counseling still.
I am sure some of you are still reading because you are like “she has got to give us a straight answer here…and tell me if I have been in therapy too long or what I am doing is just right” - but with most things in the therapy world - I wont be doing that nor telling you what to do.
Frustrating (again)- I know - specially for those parts of us that really want to hear “Yeah okay you have anxiety - let’s do a session every week for 3 months and then you’ll be good to go :)”.
But when we are able to openly communicate with ourselves and our provider about our thoughts and feelings and really explore our lived experiences - the answer to how long we should be in counseling - lives inside of us. We will know when it is time to stop or pause services. Allowing counseling to fit into our lives when we want or need it and knowing that if we leave it - we can always come back to it and vice versa.
Written by Shannon Gonter, LPCC owner of Therapy by Shannon, LLC
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