[SoupDragon]

So if a decision is made to terminate, what is the process? T says it needs to be planned over a number of weeks - what things are discussed during these sessions or is it just a chance for T to hook you back in again?

[Dreamy01]

It depends so much on each therapist, client and circumstances. Me and my former t ended our three year work together over a two month period with a three week break for Christmas. We spent the final few sessions reviewing what I had achieved with her, talking about my grief and also my plans for the future. We wrote each other a goodbye letter and read those out. It all felt very positive although inevitably there was pain too.

The decision and process of ending should be in your control as far as possible. What do you want from it? No T should 'hook' you back in again if that's not what you want. The goal should be for you to feel you can manage without therapy. If your T offers a phasing out of sessions - and most ts do -that's your chance to look at what you want to say/do before you terminate. I'm assuming you feel you're done with therapy so how about you look at how far you've come and make the ending a celebration of this?

[faith1983]

I really don't think t use it to try to hook you back in, unless he thinks it is in your better interest.

I'm in this process right now. T brought it up, not me. It was really hard the first few weeks, I started a thread on it, I was feeling like throwing up...

The session since we first talk about the end were great and really useful. We are exploring why I react like this, what it means, what I will do next, what if I think I need therapy again in the future, etc. We still have to decide when actually will be the last session, but I'm not ready to do that.

So in my case, those session are really useful. I would have been really sad if we would have stopped the week we decided it would be a good time to end. Slowly, I'm starting to feel like I can do it for real... What is new is that actually tell my t how I really feel, something I have never really done before cause I wanted him to thought I was independant and so on and so forth.

Anyway, even though some session are hard, it definitely helps a lot and I would have missed a huge part of the therapy process if I would have run away like I felt doing just after we decided it was time to end.

Take care
Faith