If you have had therapy/counselling, how long did you have it for?

[waytheleaveswork]

I've been having psychotherapy once a week for 3 and 1/2 years. It helped me leave an abusive ex, process it, now continuing with it as I find it helpful maintaining good mental health and problem solving in day to day. I can afford it, but I'm starting to think this is 'too long'.

Interested to hear of anyone who continues with therapy/counselling despite not being in a 'crisis'.

I think it really does depend on what the issues are. I did 18 months with a break in the middle. I thought I had really opened up to my therapist after the first round and it certainly helped me process some difficult things. But it wasn't until the second load that a lot of things came out I realised I had not felt safe enough before to explore. It takes time to build up a relationship with a therapist where you can be truly vulnerable, especially with deep-rooted trauma.

I think solution-focused short-term therapy for a specific issue can be helpful for some people, but for other people, deeper work takes longer. And, there is nothing wrong in having sessions regularly even when you feel like the issue you first went with is 'sorted.'

At the end of the day if you can afford it and it is still proving useful to you I would continue. On the other hand, you may be naturally coming to the end of this particular process. Maybe you could consider cutting sessions down to fortnightly and then see how you go?