When it comes to my grief, I find it very important not to pathologize it. Grief is a very difficult and slow process, but it is a normal process. I know I am not depressed. I am not in need of medication. My grief is not something talk therapy is going to "heal" because that just isn't how grief works. Finding a support group of other people also going through the grief process is BY FAR more helpful than a therapist would be because they understand without trying to "fix" it. As much as I like my therapists, I am pretty sure they would go into "fix it" mode and that honestly would cause more harm than good.

If I was truly in a mental health crisis: clinical depression, severe PTSD, anxiety - symptoms really needing monitoring and perhaps medication - then yes, I'd go back to therapy. I just don't feel the need for therapy at this point in my life if I am not in crisis.

Completely my personal viewpoint on this: As far as taking a break went, I found it helpful to give myself some time to "reset" and see where I was without a therapist. In my experience, I know while in therapy, I can tend to get bogged down in my navel gazing and forget to look up and see truly where I am at. Breaks are rather enlightening for me. They give me that opportunity to apply what I have discovered in therapy and see how my new learnings/skills, etc. hold up to reality.

I returned a couple times -- eventually -- to therapy when I saw I needed that other set of eyes on me: I was struggling again with depression usually, and wasn't sure I was truly managing well on my own. But being able to go back at that point - after an extended break and with a different therapist - felt fresh rather than more of the same. It was with a different set of eyes, a different approach to therapy, a different personality to interact with. Those differences provided fresh insights that I honestly don't feel I would have gotten from an old therapist who had already decided who I was. What I knew was that I wasn't really the same person this time around that I was the last time around: I was in a different place and I didn't want to be held to the "old" me.

If fact, there was one time (almost forgot about it) that I did try going back to my last therapist. It lasted exactly one session because I realized he still was seeing me from an "older" perspective and I was not in that "old" place. It immediately frustrated me, and I decided I didn't want to spend time retraining him (LOL). I decided not to try to restart therapy, and instead, I just continued working on myself by myself, which I realized I was quite capable of doing -- and my rates are MUCH cheaper. LOL.