My brother asked the other day for help breaking up with his therapist.

My exact reply was: “you tell them the reason(s) you want/need to be done w/therapy and thank them for anything that they did that was helpful.”

No one really tells you how to end your professional relationship with your therapist (unless you are my brother). Since generally, ending a relationship has a negative connotation, it might even feel like you are doing something wrong when you are ready to leave therapy. However, unless your therapist is incredibly unethical, they expect your work will be done at some point. “Breaking up” is going to happen (and your therapist expects it to happen) unless one of you dies first.

There are a few categories of reasons you may want or need to  be done working with your therapist.

1) You have gotten what you’d hoped to from therapy. 2) You haven’t gotten what you hoped to get out of therapy, but can’t continue due to scheduling/finances/unexpected external reasons. 3) You haven’t gotten what you hoped to get out of therapy, but don’t think you will with your current therapist.

In each of these, any therapist or counselor worth the student debt they accrued learning how to help you will want you to be honest with them. Here are some examples of what you can say, if you still aren’t sure.

1) You have gotten what you’d hoped to from therapy. This is the ideal, best-case-scenario, for you and for your therapist. Hearing from a client that they have achieved the goals they came to therapy to achieve is one of the only versions of a promotion/bonus/pat-on-the-back we get as therapists. (Sure, you might say, “my shrink raises her rates every year! That’s a raise!” More likely, raises in session fees aim to balance raises in office rents and the required licensing fees, continuing education costs, and insurance your therapist must pay in order to maintain their license to work with you.) Letting your therapist or counselor know that you’ve gotten what you hired them to help you do will be welcome news. If you feel like you have, feel proud when you tell your therapist that you’ve done what you came to do! They will be happy with and for you and will likely let you know their “door is open” if you decide you’d like help again in the future.

2) You haven’t gotten what you hoped to get out of therapy, but can’t continue  due to scheduling/finances/unexpected external reasons. If you are lucky enough to live in a city like Austin, where every third person is a therapist, counselor, social worker, LCDC, or psychologist, and if your therapist doesn’t fit your schedule/location/budget, there is someone else who does. And likely, your therapist knows of some referrals who may fit the bill for you. If it isn’t already clear, most clinicians work virtually now, so if you need help, TherapyDen.com can help you locate someone affordable/schedule-appropriate anywhere in the state where you live who will be licensed to work with you. You will not be the first client who needed something different (time/cost/etc), so telling your therapist will not be offensive to them. And they will usually provide referrals based upon what you know you need, if they can’t provide it. And obviously, if the timing just isn’t right, that’s okay too. You can come back and try again with your therapist when you are ready. Again, the key is to be honest.

3. You haven’t gotten what you hoped to get out of therapy, but don’t think you will with your current therapist. This one may feel the most challenging. Especially since it is the most likely to feel like an actual break-up. Again, you won’t be the first (or last) client to let your therapist know that you need something different. And if your therapist’s goal is to help you get better, and they aren’t the best person to do that, they need to know so that they can do their job and help you get better by helping you find the right clinician for you. Perhaps a step before this could be asking for what you need. If you feel like your therapist doesn’t really listen or understand (for example), any good therapist will want to know that and will make changes to serve you better. It may feel hard to be direct about something you’d like more or less of, but a therapist should be a safe person to practice communicating directly with, so consider this part of your therapy:  bringing up what you need with your therapist. Other things that you may discover aren’t as helpful to you, like the race/gender/sexuality/age/theoretical orientation of your therapist are also A OK to let them know. The way you perceive your therapist’s identity makes a huge difference in how you relate to them, and they to you. They want you to get what you need from therapy, so they want to know either how to provide that, or what referral you may need to get the care that you need. It really isn’t “breaking up.” Though your therapist likely cares a great deal about you, the goal of therapy is never to keep you in therapy beyond when it is helping you. (Keeping a client when they aren’t benefitting from therapy is actually quite UN-ethical and is cause for losing one’s license.) Your therapist wants to know what you believe you need, even if it is different than who they are or what they can provide.

Ending a relationship in a positive, respectful way has never happened for many people. It is your therapist’s job to allow you to experience a positive, respectful end to your working relationship, when it is time. It may take some courage, but let your therapist know when you are ready to be done with therapy, find someone new, or that it just isn’t working. They will be okay.