Ongoing assessment of your symptoms and your goals is a good idea for effective therapy. Together with your psychotherapist you want to discuss when stopping therapy or gradually tapering makes sense.

While some clients can continue to benefit from ongoing therapy, you never want to become dependent in a way that is counter-therapeutic, i.e., decreasing self-reliance, confidence, or independence. Likewise, therapy takes time and money, so those are resources to consider as well. No one should ever feel they can’t leave therapy. Therapists should happily have client’s complete therapy when the client is ready. This should be a very open dialogue. At the same time, if the client is continuing to benefit, dependency isn’t being fostered, and has the resources, a client doesn’t necessarily have to discontinue therapy either. While suffering may have decreased, some clients continue to identify areas for growth and can build on that, if it is beneficial to the client and therapy isn’t continuing because the client feels guilty or the therapist can’t let go for some reason. Therapists should work as efficiently and effectively as possible to help clients achieve their goals as expediently as possible.