how to end therapy with your clients
TRANSCRIPT
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How To End Therapy With Your Clients3 ways to signal the end of therapy
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If you are in therapy yourself, and looking for help leaving your therapist, please read this article instead.
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These days, knowing how to terminate therapy
elegantly is a core therapeutic skill.
Gone are the days when psychotherapy was
supposed to continue maybe twice a week for
decades.
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In fact, the international guidelines for the
treatment of depression suggest that if your
depressed client doesn’t feel significantly better
after five sessions you should refer them on to
another professional
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It's not right to keep someone in therapy when
they no longer need it.
And remember - they're paying!
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If someone sometimes wants to ‘catch up’ or
‘just talk’ once in a while, that’s fine, of course.
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But who was it who said: “A therapist should
assist where they can but not leave footprints in
their client’s life”?
Therapists supply a service.
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Terminating therapy as soon as possible isn’t
about throwing clients out when they still need
help. It’s about setting clear guidelines and
helping them be emotionally ready for their
therapy to end.
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3 Ways To End Therapy
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1. Ensure basic emotional needs are met outside of the therapy
room
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Everyone has basic needs for attention and
intimacy. If you don’t actively encourage and
help your client to meet these needs outside of
their therapy with you, then they’ll feel
dependent on you.
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If you’re someone’s only real source of human
contact and attention, then of course they’ll feel
as if they can’t stop seeing you.
But don’t confuse this with ‘successful therapy’.
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Clean therapy happens when the therapist:
● understands that the role of the therapist is
to help the client with specific problems and
not to meet their basic needs on an ongoing
basis
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Clean therapy happens when the therapist:
● helps the clients be clear about what these
needs are and how to meet them effectively
in their own life.
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2. Draw their attention back to their original therapy goals
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This is why it’s so important to be clear with
someone from the beginning by establishing
very clear and measurable goals.
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If nobody knows when therapy has been
successful (because no clear goals were ever
defined), then nobody knows when it’s
supposed to finish. Imagine a builder doing this
to you when working on your house.
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So from the beginning you need to build in the
expectation that therapy will end and clarify the
parameters that will govern it.
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“So we’ll know you won’t need to see me
anymore when:
● you’re sleeping better
● you feel more confident sexually
● you have stopped smoking.”
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The end should be there from the beginning.
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3. Make it clear from the beginning that therapy will be finite
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Of course, you can’t always tell exactly how
many sessions a person will need to get over a
depression, or to successfully stop drinking, but
you can give them an indication
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So I might say:
“Many people can be helped within a few
sessions and often times feel better even after
a single session.”
(Remember the power of the placebo effect!)
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If they ask what happens if they don’t feel
better, I might suggest that if after four or five
sessions they feel they haven’t benefitted
(above and beyond enjoying the
companionship of therapy), then I will refer
them onto someone else.
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You don’t need to throw someone out in the
cold, but what you do need to do is ensure the
outside is ‘warm enough’ for them.
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Nothing does, or should, last forever – including
therapy.
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