My last round of therapy lasted ten years. That's just what it took. Part of the issue was that during those ten years, I was suffering from extreme, recurrent depression and was in and out of the hospital like 15 times. It made therapy a really slow process because, honestly, when a person is THAT depressed, therapy isn't really therapy, it's safety and survival. You have to a a bit of mental stability to really do productive therapy that actually moves you forward (at least that was my experience and my therapist and psychiatrist agreed). Then there were life complications in the middle of that time that just piled on top of things: family illnesses and deaths, etc (again, not why I originally entered therapy, but made for additional work).

In those times I was more stable, I made progress; it was just interrupted from time to time -- sort of three steps forward two steps back.

I finally reached a place where it was three steps forward and maybe only one step back. And eventually, I just kept moving forward, and even major life challenges didn't send me backwards. At that point, I finally was able to stop therapy because I had the growth and healing and skills to manage whatever life throws at me without going into crisis mode.

It's a process: a slow, recursive, tedious, very personal process.