What Should I Do When Therapy Starts to Feel 'Meh'?
Knowing when and how to break up with your therapist
3 min read
It’s great that you’ve taken the plunge to try out therapy. But what happens if sessions start to lag? If your therapist isn’t getting you? If you’re coasting through and not feeling much of anything at all? In Esquire's fifteen-step guide, The Reluctant Man’s Guide to Starting Therapy, DST Director Avi Klein’s addresses the fifteenth and last step: knowing when–and how—to break up with your therapist. Avi writes, “...if you’ve hit that particular wall, it’s time for you and your therapist to part ways. Almost.”
If you start to notice feeling ambivalent about being in therapy, this is useful and wise information! The ambivalence is telling you something very important about yourself. The goal is to dig a little deeper and explore what’s underneath. The ambivalence could be a portal into more transformative work with your therapist or it could be a sign that you’ve outgrown them. When you identify what’s underneath this discomfort, you can then address the feelings productively.
Before breaking up with your therapist, Avi encourages you to communicate directly with them about your mixed feelings. If you tend to avoid conflict, this kind of direct conversation could dredge up feelings of guilt, shame, or fear. Maybe you’re scared you’ll hurt your therapist’s feelings if you express your frustration that they keep missing the mark. Or maybe you were never taught how to express frustration or longing openly, and you don’t expect that these feelings would be met with genuine curiosity and respect.
Yet the reality is that even the world’s best therapist can’t read your mind. So if you keep these frustrations inside or abruptly jump ship, you may end up enacting the same avoidant patterns in your personal life that you went to therapy to resolve in the first place.
A direct conversation with your therapist could be a transformative one where you have the opportunity to directly express these unmet needs as a bid for deeper connection. Avi writes in Esquire, “you might be surprised by how [your therapist is] able to translate your frustration into a renewed focus on the issues that matter most to you.” And if they’re not open to it, Avi writes, it’s a clear sign that your therapist is probably not the right fit.
“You might be surprised by how your therapist is able to translate your frustration into a renewed focus on the issues that matter most to you.”
DST psychotherapist Melanie Berkowitz also notes that when clients do express ambivalence with their therapist, there is often, paradoxically, a breakthrough. “That’s because there is something deeply vulnerable and empowering in saying: hey, something about these sessions isn’t working for me and I care enough about myself and our relationship to address it,” Melanie adds.
Recently, one of Melanie’s clients brought up to her that he was feeling “meh” about continuing therapy. During that session, they uncovered together that underneath this “meh” feeling, her client felt terrified about sharing more vulnerably in session. He was scared that if he shared more deeply about his past, the emotional floodgates would open and never close again.
“Together, we learned that my client wanted more reassurance from me that, as a team, we’d be able to soothe his anxiety and overwhelm together if they come up in the moment,” Melanie added. From their conversation, Melanie and her client began to identify and regulate his anxiety more proactively and the treatment improved.
If you’re still nervous about how to address ambivalence with your therapist, we’ve outlined four steps below:
1. Identify what ambivalence feels like in your body. Is there a knot in your stomach? Restlessness in your legs? A flush of anger?
2. Identify the longing underneath your impulse to end therapy. What would you like to get from these sessions that you’re currently not getting? What is your unmet need? Identify what you’re longing for. An example might be: “I long to feel less alone in therapy, but I just rehash the same problems over and over like a broken record and don’t leave feeling any differently about myself.”
3. Let your therapist know. Bring it up directly in a session if possible. Avi writes in Esquire, “You could simply say, ‘I’ve been feeling frustrated with therapy lately, and I’m hoping we can talk about it.” Be mindful of the urge to ghost your therapist or send them a last-minute email to end the treatment, and identify what’s the scariest part about expressing these concerns directly to them.
“There is something deeply vulnerable and empowering in saying, hey something about these sessions isn’t working for me and I care enough about myself and our relationship to address it.”
4. Trust yourself. If you still want to end treatment after the conversation, great! Sometimes, a therapist will even help you clarify what you haven't gotten in your work with them and point you in the right direction to find someone who’s better tailored to meet your goals.
Finally, it is completely normal to feel mixed about ending a therapeutic relationship. You can still honor the work you have done with your therapist just as you simultaneously acknowledge that it’s time to move on. Like all human relationships, therapeutic relationships naturally evolve and change. Your mixed feelings are not just normal—they might actually be a sign of healthy growth.