Some people sit in therapy for years without ever asking whether it is doing anything. Others quit good therapy right before it was about to get somewhere.

Both are expensive mistakes, and they are hard to tell apart when you are the one sitting there. Here is how I would sort it out.

Start With What You Came For

The first question is the simplest one. Are you getting anywhere on the goals you walked in with?

You came in for something. Panic attacks. A marriage that had gone cold. Drinking. Depression that would not lift. Look at what you wanted less of and what you wanted more of, and ask yourself what has actually changed.

If the honest answer after a reasonable stretch of time is nothing at all, pay attention to that.

Progress Rarely Looks Like A Straight Line

Here is where people get it wrong, and it is the reason I teach my clients a concept called rising bottoms. The term comes out of business, and it fits any process of change.

Moreover, change rarely happens linearly. It happens as a series of bottoms, each one a little less severe than the one before it.

A client comes in with severe panic attacks every day. After several sessions she still gets hit with anxiety, but now it rises to about a five out of ten and stops there. She is still anxious. Her worst moment is now half of what it used to be.

A couple cannot have a fight without going silent on each other for days. Several weeks into the work they have another fight, and this time the silence lasts eight hours. They still fought. They got back to each other in a fraction of the time.

A man with a substance problem used to relapse and disappear for a year and a half. He relapses again and comes back in six weeks. He still relapsed. He also cut eighteen months down to six.

All three of those people might tell you therapy is not working, because all three are measuring against where they want to end up instead of where they started. When a client tells me they feel stuck, sometimes they are, and sometimes I can show them a rising bottom they walked right past.

When Wanting To Quit Is The Work

Now the harder case.

Sometimes the urge to leave therapy is coming from a protective part. Something got close to a feeling a part of you has guarded for decades, and that part wants you to stop.

From where you sit, this feels the same as real dissatisfaction. What tells them apart is ambivalence. If one part of you wants to keep going while another part wants out, you are looking at inner conflict, and inner conflict means part of you does want the change.

In session, we take that seriously and get curious about it. In addition, I explore it without judgment, because that part of a person has usually been judged plenty already. What is it worried about. What does it think will happen if you keep going. It almost always has a reason, and when I hear the reason, it makes sense.

Say It Out Loud Before You Go

If you are thinking about ending therapy, tell your therapist directly. I want my clients to bring it to me so we can look at the reasons together, and a good therapist will want that same conversation.

When a client tells me they do not believe they are benefiting, my next question is always what they feel is missing. That question tends to go one of two ways. Sometimes they tell me exactly what they need more of, I adjust how I am working, and the therapy gets better. Other times what comes out is a block, and now we have found the thing that was in the way the whole time.

Either answer helps you. Walking out without saying anything gives you neither one.

The question I ask clients in this spot is one you can put to yourself first. Does every part of you want to stop, or is there a part that wants to stay?

If all of you is done, trust that and act on it. If some part of you wants to stay, hear it out before you make the call.

One More Thing

Be careful with a therapist who cannot tell you what they are actually doing, or who has no real explanation for how people change beyond listening sympathetically. Feeling supported is a good thing. Feeling supported for three years while your life stays exactly the same is a different thing.

Look back at the last six months. Find the things that would have knocked you down for weeks a year ago and notice how long it took you to recover this time.

That is your answer.