What Really Happens When Therapy Ends

Grief therapy doesn’t follow a script. Nor do the endings. This article offers a glimpse into one final session and the quiet shifts that can appear: less tension, softer thoughts, a little more room for kindness. Each person’s timing is different – some finish after a handful of sessions, others pause or continue longer. Here’s what an ending can feel like, and how therapy adapts to your uniqueness.

Therapy Responds to Our Uniqueness

Today, a client and I brought their therapy to an end after 20 sessions. As usual in the final session, we reflected on the changes they’d experienced, all of them unexpected, which have created such a difference not only in the way they sat in the chair opposite me, their speech, but also in their entire demeanour.
Gone was the electric tension which I sensed from several feet away; gone were the rigid facial expressions. Gone were the rigid thoughts, and surprisingly, gone was the anger which had long been in residence. Gone too was their feeling of hopelessness and the stoicism which had characterised their daily life for a long time. Stoicism is no bad thing, but it had taken centre stage. Love, vulnerability, and kindness were pushed to the background.

The Unexpected Happens

It’s not uncommon for clients and their therapist to focus on what are loosely called ‘anger issues’, using various therapeutic techniques to help locate, to express, to understand and, hopefully, to let go of it.
Yet my client and I hadn’t focused on their anger. Our attention was elsewhere. Paradoxically through therapeutic attention elsewhere, looking in another direction, the anger slipped away. Stoicism also decided that it could relinquish its central place, allowing new understanding, and with this, love and mercy, to gather there instead.
When therapy is allowed to arrive at its unforced end, I rejoice to see what I discern as no more and no less than transformation in my Clients. The imprisoned go free. In grief therapy, we learn how we may live constructively and hospitably with grief as a permanent house-guest. We learn its nuances, its moods if you like, its seasons and swells. In doing so we begin to gain the upper hand, so that although grief remains a house-guest it also learns to be less demanding, obstructive, oppressive and rude.

How long is the piece of string?

So often I’m reminded how wonderfully unique each one of us is. Because we’re unique, there isn’t and cannot ever be a ‘one size fits all’ approach to therapy.
Some people need and benefit from a long-term approach lasting more than 6 months. Others find it immensely beneficial to take a pause from their therapy which can last from a few weeks to a few months. This gives space for learning and insights to be absorbed, alongside changes to behaviour and mindsets to be put into practice before they re-engage with therapy once more. Other people need only a relatively short number of sessions to help them address difficulties and distress.
At some point, therapy will come to its end: with therapeutic work completed: insights and understanding have been deepened and expanded; a stronger sense of self and of autonomy emerges; energies of body, mind and spirit return.
That doesn’t mean that my Client can’t return at some later point: the door is always open. For now, they’re ‘good to go’.

Curious?

Sometimes it seems as if the therapy has a life, an energy and intelligence of its own. It knows what’s needed. My task is to attend to this and allow it to be at work.
I regard the therapeutic role I have as a profound privilege. I never cease to be in awe of the courage my clients display and never cease to learn from and with them.
If reading this makes you curious about working with me, then I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line, give me a call. I’ll be here when you’re ready.