How to Tell Your Therapist That Sessions Have Gone Stale

How to Tell Your Therapist That Sessions Have Gone Stale

By Lauren Chapin, LICSW

Whether you’ve been in therapy for a few months or a few years, there may come a time when sessions feel less helpful than they once did. Maybe over time, discussions have felt more casual than focused, or perhaps you’ve found yourself giving a monotonous play-by-play of your week during each meeting. No matter what has made your sessions grow stale, addressing this with your therapist is the best way to change course. But how?

Go Back to the Beginning

    One way to get things moving and grooving again is to revisit your original goals for therapy. Often, when someone embarks on the therapy journey, one of the first questions they’re asked is, “What brings you here today?” Do you remember your answer? Perhaps you realize that your goals were never actually solidified. That’s okay! This is a great opportunity to let your therapist know that you’d like help working on your goals for treatment in a more concrete way. On the other hand, you may find that you’ve made substantial progress with your original goals and can spend time reviewing your progress and identify fresh areas for growth. Remember, your treatment plan is like a living, breathing document. It’s something to return to with your therapist whenever you feel off track as a reminder of your original goals. 

But Goals Are Hard 

    It’s easy enough to say, “Identify some goals!” but harder to actually put that into practice. If you’d like a headstart on this before bringing the issue to your therapist, it might be helpful to do a personal inventory. Think about some of the different domains in your life such as health, relationships, career, education, leisure, or spirituality. For each category you identify, rate your personal satisfaction with that area on a scale of one to five with one being “This area needs major damage control” and five being “I am thriving.”

 Once you’ve set your ratings, prioritize one or two areas of your life that could use the most attention and care. Sometimes, it may feel like problems are crawling out of the woodwork from all areas. That may be true, but spreading your focus too thin may impede progress. Think of this like building a house. The roof will eventually need to be built too, but right now you’re still pouring the concrete. 

Change in Frequency 

    How often are you finding yourself in the therapy chair? If you have been seeing your therapist weekly for quite some time, this could be an opportunity to scale back sessions to biweekly and test out all of your new coping skills in between. On the other hand, maybe you’ve been seeing your therapist biweekly or monthly already and this is disrupting continuity for you. Towards the end of each session, many therapists will ask when you would like to come back. This would be the perfect time to discuss any questions or concerns you may have about switching up the frequency of your visits and receive feedback. 

Can I Have Homework?

    Did you ever think you’d be the one requesting a homework assignment? Probably not. Homework allows you to solidify what you have learned. Whether that’s by practicing a new skill, reflecting on an idea or question, or following through on a weekly goal, homework helps to keep the work going in between sessions. It also gives you a ready-made topic to discuss during your next meeting–the work will be less stale in no time. Together with your therapist, come up with something you’d like to focus on before you see them again. 

Communicate

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, practice communicating your needs to your therapist. This can feel scary and confrontational, so it may be easier to review old goals and identify new ones, switch up session frequency, or ask for homework without ever saying why this is important to you. However, take this as an opportunity to advocate for yourself in a safe space. A lot of therapy is what you make of it and if your therapist doesn’t know that you’re feeling stagnant, you may not see timely improvement.
​