[rainbow8]

My other thread is about my money issues and therapy. The responses suggest that some of you expect to see a T "forever". Sw628 brought up that she thought the goal of therapy was for you to eventually quit, not to need to stay in it forever. I don't see either viewpoint as right or wrong, but it is an interesting question and ties into my dilemma of wanting to be in therapy forever but feeling it's wrong (forgetting about the financial aspect).

Oh God! I hope I'm not in therapy forever! My goal is to learn what I need to be able to go through the rest of my life with independence and strength. Even my t has said, "You know, I really don't want to grow old with you." And bit by bit I feel like I'm getting closer to that goal.

[velcro003]

yeah i hope not, either! I didn't think I'd make it much past a year AT MOST. I am now on the 2nd year and feel like I'm just digging in

[TayQuincy]

Well, I would like to stay in therapy forever, preferably with my current T. However, I know she would not allow that. I think most therapists expect clients to get better and eventually move on. I think it depends on the T, the dx, and the ability to afford therapy. I think having a therapist in my life would be helpful even when I am doing well or recovered. If I ever won the lottery, I would hope to stay in T for the rest of my life! Ah, but maybe I am just addicted to therapy...I have been in T for half my life!

[ECHOES]

Well.... I think I have been... but Yes, I do expect to be in some kind of therapy, some kind of self-exploration forever.

I'm undecided. My T has said that I can see her as long as I like, that some people do go forever, even if they scale back to once/month or something. I know she did therapy for many years, so she doesn't see anything wrong with it. In a perfect world, yes, I might continue forever with my current T, even if I scaled back to less frequently. I think I would always get something out of it, even if I didn't absolutely *need* it to function. But with financial and time constraints, etc. I think there is a good chance I will stop at some point and I feel OK about that, just not yet.

[Fartraveler]

Well, there's a (legitimate) kind of therapy called maintenance therapy, which often consists of some contact every few months. It's basically for people who are done with therapy, but still need some kind of support to keep from relapsing.

Nothing wrong with it, it's a medical choice.

In fact, I rather think that I personally am now in maintenance therapy. I see my T every few months, email her when I feel like it. If there's an issue, I see her more.

I think that just gradually kind of happened -- my life got busy, therapy got less frequent.

But why should I give it up completely? There's plenty of good things in my life, and she is one of them. I'm not going to lose my relationship with her just because of some dogmatic "should."

-Far

[Rmdctc]

I do expect to be in therapy for my life time. I am a person with not alot of people/family around me to talk to so I think it gives me a much needed outlet. I am also a type of person that needs it to continue to be able not to relaps. I wish I didn't but such is life.

[sunrise]

I'm not sure I have my own expectations about how long I'll be in therapy. My T did say when I first started with him that he doesn't do longterm therapy, which he defined as over 3 years. Yet I have now been with him 3 years and 2 months. So he appears to not be firm on that cut-off. He has told me before that he has some clients that he hasn't seen for years and then they come back for a "tune-up" when a new issue arises in their life that they need help with. He says they just pick back up where they left off and it works well. So maybe that is what I will transition to at some point. I used to go to therapy weekly, but now I go every 2-3 weeks. I would probably see my T indefinitely every few weeks if he would let me, although the cost is high since he is not covered by my insurance. I still have stuff to work on in therapy, so for now I will keep going.

Sw628 brought up that she thought the goal of therapy was for you to eventually quit, not to need to stay in it forever.

Every client has different goals. There is no one "goal of therapy," IMO. I have a number of goals but that one has not been on my list--I just never really thought about it. My goals include learning to be more authentic, recognizing feelings as I experience them, finding my voice, communicating better, working on trauma, and more.

well lets see....my parents did a mighty good job of inflicting massive damage upon me as a child due to severe sexual, emotional & physical abuse as did their friends and assorted others....they were alcoholics and suffered from mental illness as well.

so...flash forward...i'm 51...got substance abuse issues, did, ptsd, bipolar, depression, health issues, hell even my issues have issues...i expect to be in therapy pretty much forever...but then again i didn't start until '92...and that was with the unethical evil t.

now i've been with my current t for almost 4 years (spring '10) . made real preogress. she says she is in no hurry to get rid of me and i can come until i don't want to come any more....if i choose to stop or take a break that is fine..she said she will always be there for me as she is my t.

i figure the abuse cycle goes back at least 3 generations i know of and ahead at least one...it is firmly entrenched..so is the mental illness. i need all the help i can get in dealing with things...as i go to see my regular dr to deal with my "normal" health stuff (asthma, kidneys, diabetis etc, i take care of my mental health stuff the same way. my head is the same as my kidneys...

[crystalrose]

i feel like i will be in therapy forever but i definatly hope not.

[Elysium]

That depends how long forever is.....

When I started therapy, I expected to see T for the 30 insurance visits and that would be it. I'd never been in therapy before.

Now I've been with him for over two years and I don't have any expectations about when therapy will end. If there comes a point where I feel like "I'm done", that's fine. And if I never reach that point and want to do some kind of maintenance therapy forever, that's fine too.

[WePow]

Well forever is an aweful long time... if I thought I had to be on this planet that long, I would be in a ward for sure!!! YUCK!!!

For this life, I really hope I get settled internally very soon - within the next year - or ... well not saying it. All I know is this life has stunk beyond all sense or normal stink. I can't deal with this level of pain long term. And for me, I tend to only go to a doctor if a body part is about to fall off. AKA - I hate going for help of any kind. So in my case, who knows what may happen or what my answer will be.

[sittingatwatersedge]

>>> Do you expect to be in therapy forever?

not really, but sometimes it feels like it.

[deliquesce]

i guess there are two questions going on here, really.

1) what are you expectations regarding how long you will be in therapy
2) do you think being in therapy "forever" is ok?
oh, and a 3rd one which ppl seem to be answering instead:
3) would you like to be in therapy forever.

re: the first question. i started with pdoc and honestly assumed i would see him maybe 3-4 times over the year and be off my meds by the end of it. i remember having a crisis of sorts around the 2 year mark, when i figured out there wasn't an end in sight (just yet). so my expectations have changed quite considerably. where i am right now... i expect i will finish up (hopefully!) in another 2-3ish years, but sooner is better. pdoc expects that i will always require some form of medication, but that once i've settled my "issues" that i will be a lot more stable and that we can probably catch up once a year or if i feel i need some adjustments made.

re: the rightness/wrongness of it all. i think it should be an implicit goal that people work towards making therapy less a part of their lives. certainly it is part of the therapist's ethical guidelines. i think a potential hazard with therapy being "forever" is that the client (and therapist) might not work so hard to make things better. i often notice that i will turn to pdoc instead of my friends, even when i know my friends are more than capable of meeting my needs in that moment. of course it makes sense that i would turn to pdoc (i trust him) but it hinders me forming lasting and meaningful relationships in the 'outside' world. often i will let austin-t guide me through things i can do for myself, if i just put an hour aside to think it through & problem solve.

i agree with stumpy that you should look after your head the way you should look after your body. but i have my fair share of chronic illnesses myself, and after the initial few consultations, i learnt how to manage them myself (and consult a dr as required). i hope therapy puts me in that place also. i would like to be able to deal with grief without needing to run to a therapist to guide me through it. i would like more self belief to be able to handle my own (normal for the general human race) ups and downs.

as for the third question. i would LOVE to be in therapy forever!! but that means having pdoc and austin-t around forever, and both of them could just as easily die tomorrow and i wouldn't want to find someone new (unless of course i had unfinished business to work through). "therapy forever" means a concrete relationship with someone who cares about me and someone i care about. but i know i could just meet that need by emailing every so often, or dropping by for a chat. i dont need to be a forever-client for that.

[peaches100]

My h has joked (but was sort of serious too) that I'll need to be in therapy forever. I asked my t if that was true, and she said, she thinks it's a possibility that, unless i make some good friends i am close to and can confide in, i may always need some kind of supportive therapeutic relationship.

Having said that, i wouldn't want to have any other t than my current t. So whenever she decides that she doesn't want to be a t anymore, i would probably terminate. Whether i started again with somebody new would depend on how well i was able to manage the termination and my own stability.

It takes me so incredibly long to trust a t (10 years so far) that i can't imagine starting out with somebody new all over again.

I do think that the overall goal of therapy is for the client to regain wellness and be able to terminate. But i also think there are exceptions to the rule, and it really is very individualized and depends on many factors. Therapy should never just become a chat session. If there's no pressing issues to work on, then terminating or going to monthly maintenance sessions may be appropriate. But some people simply need to continue therapy for an indefinite period of time.

I personally think i would benefit from therapy indefinitely, but I would hope one day to cut it down to monthly maintenance sessions. I can't see the day when i wouldn't need it at all anymore, but who knows?

[sw628]

It seems like everyone has a different take on when and how long they expect to be in therapy.
I guess since i'm still young ( early twenties) and have only been in therapy for a little over a year, being in therapy forever seems like such a long timeeek:

My T was in her own therapy for 10 years and then decided that she wanted to become a T. She is still going to group therapy and individual maintence therapy from time to time. So really, she has been in therapy for over 18 years.

Stumpy))) I agree. I have had a lot of traumatizing physical and emotional abuse as well as severe abandonment issues. I have a lot of painful issues to work on and redo with T.
I don't think that we'll be in therapy forever because no one lives forever. I do however think that extended therapy ( whether you need it or not) is a personal choice. Who knows, maybe ten years from now i'll be whole and healed or maybe just getting into the deep stuff. I guess i'll just have to see.

And sometimes you take a break for awhile. I took a 15 year break last time. Each time I've been in therapy, my issues have been a little different. We go through phases in our lives that bring up different things. When I was in college, I was really from disclosure of abuse as a teenager and flashbacks. Lots of immediate family issues to deal with. When I was around 30, it was disclosure of a different, much earlier era of abuse and flashbacks dealing with it. This time around it's been more, marital issues, autonomy issues, communication issues, bipolar issues, LOTS of hospitalizations for med issues.

I kind of feel like once I make it through this set of issues, I should really be able to stand on my own two feet and move on with life. I'll always have the bipolar problems to deal with with a pdoc, but hopefully the therapy will be much less frequent, if at all. My t's goal has been for me to reach that autonomy and be able to move on, and I think I'm just about there. I'm really wanting to move forward.

About 9 years ago, I was in therapy for only 9 sessions, getting help with depression. I think that therapy just made it possible for me to function, but we didn't really delve deep into any of my issues. But I always knew that I needed to go back - I searched and then saw one therapist for just one session about 3 years ago, she was horrible, so I decided not to pursue therapy. Cut to this year, I was making a lot of changes in my life for the better, and I knew it was time. And thank God I found my T and not other bad one!

Going in there, I was worried for the first 10 sessions at least that I should be 'cured' by the time my insured 20 sessions ran out. Well, wouldn't ya know - the real work was just beginning around Session 20! T was honest with me upfront - at our very first session, T told me that it often takes more than 20 sessions - I thought, I'll prove her wrong! Around Session 17, T told me that she sees some patients for years and years, and that she feels that it takes around a year to really build the relationship. T also said that I could leave at any time and then come back if I needed to. After pondering all that, it really helped me to hear T say all this - I was able to take pressure off myself, and I stopped having expectations on when therapy will end.

Do I expect to be in therapy forever? No. Do I know how much longer I'll be in therapy? No clue. That would've freaked me out earlier, but now I'm actually glad because I'm nowhere near ready to consider termination, and I feel like I'm just hitting the deep issues now. But when I do quit, I think that I would definitely consider doing maintenance therapy once every few months, at least for awhile. And I wouldn't rule out the possibility of returning to therapy later - who knows what might come up in life!

[jexa]

Well, I can't be in therapy forever with my current T because I'll be heading to grad school in about a year and a half, and that will be far away. I guess it makes it hard to trust her, but I am used to people leaving and leaving people behind, so it's not so bad I guess.

I expect to be in and out of therapy for the rest of my life. I know therapy is the place to go when you are stuck. Everyone gets stuck at different points in their lives, and I know therapy works for that. So, I will likely take long breaks but never be "done." I always will be working on self-improvement, anyway.

[sittingatwatersedge]

Originally Posted by jexa

I know therapy is the place to go when you are stuck. Everyone gets stuck at different points in their lives, and I know therapy works for that.

you are very wise Jexa. I wish I had had that knowledge when I was your age. Good for you!

[elliemay]

Hmmm, that is a very good question. My knee jerk reaction is "Oh lord I hope not", but the reality of the situation may dictate that long term therapy is the right thing for me.

No matter how hard I try, I always seem to find more down you know? It's there, long buried, but never really dead.

I used to think that there would be this one moment in therapy where all would become obvious and clear. My path would be immediately laid in front of me, and I would be happy forever after that release. Corrected and righted.

It's not going to happen that way for me. It's more like unwrapping a ball of saran wrap, pulling off one transparent, yet suffocating layer at a time.

Ultimately, I want to be free from what clings to me but it's a process I guess and not an end goal.

[theave]

This is an interesting thread. I was diagnosed with depression almost 2 years ago and remember taking ADs for the first time and being horrified that I might have to take them for a few months - skip forward to now, and I'm still changing meds to find a combination that works. About 8 years ago I was quite low and had a few counselling sessions at my GP's surgery, made a few changes to my life and was fine. This time though I had a few sessions through my OH's work and it felt like it was only scratching the surface - I was only allowed 5 face-to-face sessions but luckily was offered other support through MH services in my area.

And now? - well, I've been seeing this t for a few months now and feel I am beginning to trust and open up more, so I can't see it finishing any time soon. I can recognise that some of my problems are because I am quite socially isolated but I feel I need a period of stability before I feel able to take on commitments that I can cope with without feeling overwhelmed. Not there yet. I would hope that at some point I will be able to cope - and even enjoy - life without therapy, but I am trying not to set time limits just now.

[Merlin]

I don't expect therapy with my T to last a long time. Right now we are working on a few specific things. Basic self-care, filling up my days with productive and satisfying activities and establishing and deepening friendships. Once I have achieved those goals, unless new goals surface during the treatment, I will probably quit seeing T. $170 isn't something I can pay frequently, even with my mom paying 70% and leaving me only $50 a week to cover.

I expect to see my pdoc until he retires. We have a very therapeutic relationship, although it seemed to develop instantly rather than over time. The first time I met him, something clicked, for lack of a better word. That just happens with some people I find. My pdoc has talked me through times where I felt crazy (when I was cycling between deep depression and hypomania in a matter of days or sometime hours, and when I hallucinated (although I still don't understand what a non-psychotic hallucination is)) and talked me through time where I felt suicidal. I probably keep seeing him every month or every three months depending on what is needed and as a nice contrast to T, Alberta Health and Wellness pays him.