Relationships are long conversations
On the one hand, you will know that you no longer need psychotherapy when you are no longer struggling with your internal experiences. On the other hand, you can stay as long as you want. Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. The process of psychotherapy matters just as much as the outcome.
Good relationships, whether they are with a romantic partner, a colleague, a parent, a child, or a friend, feel like one long conversation. You can pick up where you left off and tangent casually, feeling known and understood. The journey towards greater intimacy in the relationship is what matters and the process is enjoyable for its own sake. There’s nowhere in particular to go, other than towards greater understanding and enjoyment of life and one another.
The psychotherapeutic relationship can be another such relationship. If you’ve never been in a relationship where the purpose was to relax and enjoy one another, psychotherapy can give you the opportunity to drop your guard. It is purposeful. Just like building a life together is the purpose of a relationship with your life partner and helping a child develop and grow is the purpose of the parenting relationship, the purpose of the psychotherapy relationship is to reduce the suffering created by your mind. The process by which the psychotherapy relationship unfolds matters.
Some try to do psychotherapy perfectly. Some try to do it urgently. Many resist the intimacy and the sense of dependency that psychotherapy can trigger. We all have dependency needs and they don’t end when we grow out of childhood. Relaxing into a relationship where all of the attention is on you and your suffering can trigger shame, guilt, and self-criticism. This is a normal part of the psychotherapy process, and it requires surrender is the same way that sensations and thoughts require surrender.
As you surrender to the process of being cared for, your sense of self-worth and safety will increase. You’ll become less afraid and more curious about your internal world. Thinking and talking about your internal experience becomes fun, rather than burdensome. Like any other trusting relationship, as you begin to trust the psychotherapy process, to feel efficacious and curious about your experience, psychotherapy can become really productive. At that point, rather than urgently needing psychotherapy to reduce your suffering, the psychotherapy relationship becomes a long conversation that you can choose to enjoy.