Don’t Ghost Your Therapist

I know, saying the hard things is, well, hard. It’s especially hard to say hard things like, “I don’t think I’m making enough progress and may need to try a different approach.” Here’s the thing: investing all the time and money in therapy just to ghost your therapist seems a bit wasteful, doesn’t it? Studies have even confirmed that ghosting has toxic effects. So the tl;dr version of this post is anyone investing in therapy should know better than to ghost anyone, especially their therapist. Read on though if you are interested in alternatives to ending your therapeutic relationship precipitously.

It’s Session Three and You’re Just Not Comfortable

This is part of what I think of as the magical window of the “trial period” where either you or the therapist are free to just say, “This just isn’t working for me.” Maybe their office smells weird. Maybe they have a weird laugh that really bothers you. Maybe they feel the same way. Sometimes people just don’t vibe, and that’s okay.

Walk into that third session and open with the fact that it doesn’t seem to be working and you would like to discuss how to find a better fit next time. Focus your intention on making it a productive conversation that will help you be a better consumer. The therapist is not going to alter everything about himself, his office, or his laugh just to accommodate someone who is leaving, so set that aside.

It’s Month Two and Nothing Has Changed

Relatable. I have the same experience with my partner. I tell him month after month that he needs to take the trash out too and does it happen without me yelling at him? No. Seriously though, the joke about it only taking one therapist to change a lightbulb if the lightbulb wants to change is a classic because it’s true. If you feel like you have a good rapport with your therapist and that they seem invested in helping you, it’s time to check in with yourself and ask what you are doing between and during sessions to make progress. Just showing up is an important step. Sometimes, that’s all we can do for a few months. I’ve done it. Other therapists I know have done it with their own therapy too, but we know better than to blame the therapist if we don’t make progress because we are just showing up (often sporadically) without any thought about what we want to work on or any intention of being reflective.

Therapy is work. Sometimes, if you’re suffering from anxiety and panic, for example, the therapist taking you through a guided imagery exercise can be helpful because it helps calm you down to the point of being able to talk about something in that hour. However, if your goal is to regulate your anxiety better in the long term, you need to practice the grounding techniques and relaxation techniques your therapist sent you after your first session. The value of the sessions isn’t to fix anyone’s brain. The value is to review what you’ve tried, what worked and what didn’t work, and fine-tune your plan.

This is a point to pause and ask, “Am I really doing my part?” If you are and you need more specific instructions or support from your therapist, that’s great, but ask for them and give your therapist a few sessions to adjust.

Your Therapist Isn’t Enough of a Task Master

For those who like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing they like. If that’s what you’re interested in and the therapist isn’t that, I’m not sure why you stayed past session three and didn’t say anything, but these things happen. It’s standard practice in most forms of therapy for the therapist to ask what you want to work on that particular day. If you say you want to work on a specific thing and your therapist starts talking about pizza instead, it’s completely valid to be frustrated by that, but if you answer with “I don’t know,” you aren’t giving your therapist much to go on.

Most therapists are not going to just blindly assume that you want to pick up with whatever you were talking about last week because it’s therapy, it’s not an HBO show. Maybe you’re still processing stuff from last week. Maybe something different is more pressing this week. We don’t know unless you tell us.

When it comes to “homework” like recommended reading, etc. we might ask about it and we might not. The reason we might not is most therapists and clients have trauma from teachers putting them on the spot about missing assignments in the past and that feels cruel. If you want to talk about the reading you completed or the worksheet you completed, that’s great! What an excellent answer to the question, “What would you like to work on today?”

Remember Why You’re There

Therapy is fundamentally about becoming more comfortable with being genuine and communicating clearly and honestly. If you don’t have the interest or bandwidth for therapy right now, if it’s too expensive, if it’s cutting into TV time too much, whatever the issue may be, that’s okay. It’s an optional activity. No deep reason required, but the mature way to handle it is to show up for that last session, say it’s your last session, and take advantage of all that work you’ve done: get a summary of the progress you’ve made, ask about ideas for things to continue working on if you choose to continue with someone else in the future, share what has worked for you. That is so much better than ghosting someone.