How Long Does Therapy Take?
We are going to cover a couple of really good questions today. One I get quite frequently. The other one, I’m going to pose to you. The one I get frequently is, how long does therapy take? So, if someone is going to get treatment for depression or anxiety they want to know, “How long does therapy take to make me feel better?”
So, great question. How long does therapy take? I’m going to compare that with medical illnesses. Cancer is going take much longer and the treatment might be different than a common cold. With mental health, and we’ll say mental illness, it will vary based on the severity of the illness.
It may take anywhere from just a couple of weeks, as it could be crisis intervention. Or, I may just need to work through something. So I can get my focus back and move forward. It can also be more long-standing. Sometimes I hear about people in therapy for years and years. If it’s beneficial, that’s fine.
Let’s look at a couple things. So, how long does it take? Think about it like this. You might see a therapist, typically one hour per week. You might see them for six months, which is kind of a typical time. But again, based on the severity, it could be shorter or it could be longer. That’s only 24 sessions in six months. If I’m going on a weekly basis.
So, let’s kind of expand this out. I hear people sometimes say, “Well, I’ve experienced trauma. I’m gonna be in therapy a really long time.” Again, I’m gonna compare this to a medical issue. If someone has been in therapy for years dealing with trauma and they’re not really getting much better, maybe it’s time that the intervention changes.
Think about it like a medical illness. If they’re being treated by a certain medication or a certain procedure and they’re not getting better, they’re not going to continue to do the same thing hoping for a different result. They’re gonna change it up.
With therapy it’s the same thing. If you’ve been going to therapy for a long time and you are thinking, “Hey, it’s gonna take an extremely long time for me to get over this.” That’s not necessarily true.
Focused interventions can be extremely effective. If you have been in treatment and you’re not really seeing progress, it would be a good time to talk to the person that’s providing treatment. You might say, “Hey, maybe we should try a different approach or a different direction.”
I will share with you that, as a clinician, I’m constantly reevaluating. I need to know what kind of progress my client is making. Do I need to change my approach or intervention?
Okay, so let’s get to the better question. What if the question switched from how long does it take, to, how far can I go? Now we’re looking at personal growth.
It’s one thing if I’m going to go to therapy to try to overcome something. But what if, once I get through whatever it is, what do I want to become instead? How do I become a better, stronger, more emotionally healthy and stable individual?
You could apply this to a lot of different areas of life. I could look at it like physical health. If I’m going to exercise and I’m thinking, how long will it take me to run a certain distance? How long will my workout take?
What if I looked at it a little different. How far can I go. I wonder how much I could do.
Think about it with work. I have an eight-hour day and I have all this work ahead of me; I wonder how long it’ll take? What if I switched it? I wonder how much I can accomplish. I wonder how much I can get done. I wonder how much that’s gonna change the rest of my life.
So, these are just some things for you to think about. How long will it take? That’s fine, but I’m just looking in a greater sense as far as growth. How far can I go? Who can I become?