{"id":32365,"date":"2016-07-14T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=32365"},"modified":"2016-07-13T10:24:04","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T17:24:04","slug":"why-times-up-in-therapy-should-be-difficult-to-hear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/why-times-up-in-therapy-should-be-difficult-to-hear-0714164","title":{"rendered":"Why \u2018Time\u2019s Up\u2019 in Therapy Should Be Difficult to Hear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Youth\u201cEnding a therapy session is a hostile act.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was said to me by my<\/em> therapist once after we discussed how, regardless of whether I had a \u201cgood\u201d session or a frustrating one, I usually felt annoyed at the end. Either I was upset it was over and afraid of losing momentum, or I was upset we didn\u2019t get to the heart of what I wanted to talk about. I\u2019d question whether anything really changed because of the therapy session, and I didn\u2019t recognize the importance of the feelings that arose at the end of a session or what that ending was doing to me.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that annoyance inevitably dissolved by the start of the next session. A whole other week had passed, and other things had come up. Feelings (as they are wont to do) had come and gone.\u00a0It was difficult to find a way to process that fleeting end-of-session feeling.<\/p>\n

\n\t

Find a Therapist<\/a><\/h2>\n\t
\n\n\t\t\t\n\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\tAdvanced Search<\/a>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

Holding on to Feelings Between Therapy Sessions<\/h2>\n

I tried several ways to hold on to the feeling I\u2019d have at the end of a session because I believed it was important. With one previous therapist, I got permission to record our sessions and then listen to the recording on the way to my next session. (I stole this idea from Irvin Yalom.) The idea was to connect each session to the previous one. This technique didn\u2019t last. It was too much of a commitment: spending a whole other chunk of time rehashing the previous week. Also, it didn\u2019t take into consideration what I was feeling at the time of the new session, which was just as valid.<\/p>\n

Another tactic I tried was to jot down notes as I left therapy. I\u2019d write down any insights I thought I\u2019d want to return to or ideas I thought about as the session ended. I\u2019d try to record associations I made later that day or that week. This helped a little (sometimes I still do this).<\/p>\n

Doing that had reminded me of how I used to go to a coffee shop near my therapist\u2019s office and journal for a while before meeting with her. That journaling<\/a> became agenda writing: I\u2019d compile a list of all the stuff I wanted to make sure we spoke about.<\/p>\n

Gosh, I was working hard. And sometimes we\u2019d get to a lot of that agenda. We\u2019d really get somewhere and I\u2019d settle in to how I was feeling and \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cTime\u2019s up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore to say next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

She could end at 45 minutes, but I had to keep living my life. I had to go back out into the world and manage and deal and, well, I wanted to be finished. Complete. My therapist hadn\u2019t done her job because I needed to come back next week, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all the time we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or my favorite:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be continued.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those phrases would annoy me so much. They made me feel that, to my therapist, I was only 45 minutes\u2019 worth of purging. She could end at 45 minutes, but I had to keep living my life. I had to go back out into the world and manage and deal and, well, I wanted to be finished. Complete. My therapist hadn\u2019t done her job because I needed to come back next week, right?<\/p>\n

It took a long time for me to realize this was anger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It took a while to express it as anger.<\/p>\n

It took quite some time (and another therapist\u2014a man this time) to relate that anger at being \u201ccut off\u201d to all the other shames and endings and cut-offs in my life.<\/p>\n

Talk to Your Therapist About These Feelings<\/h2>\n

The end of a therapy<\/a> session can provide a lot of important fuel because it brings the feeling toward the therapist. This happens when the person in therapy feels safe enough to let the therapist \u201chave it.\u201d It happens when the person trusts that the therapist isn\u2019t going to become defensive or punitive for expressing feelings they have spent weeks talking about.<\/p>\n

This is the relational part of many types of therapy. It\u2019s bringing real-world emotion<\/a> into the therapy room where it\u2019s most potent, where it can be held and fully expressed.<\/p>\n

Written into the process of therapy is that the caring, patient<\/a>, empathic<\/a> person you\u2019re paying to listen to you and witness your life will tell you time is up. That should<\/em> suck. That should<\/em> make you upset. And you should say all that to your therapist.<\/em> And if you\u2019re aware of those feelings at the end of a session, let your therapist know you need help expressing them at the next session.<\/p>\n

I do the same thing now. I tell people it\u2019s time to end a session and they have all kinds of feelings. Sometimes there\u2019s relief. Often there\u2019s annoyance. Sometimes there\u2019s intense anger. But I\u2019m always glad when they have enough courage<\/a> to tell me how they feel about it.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I\u2019m brave enough to tell my therapist as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMore next week.\u201d \u201cTime’s up.\u201d And then there\u2019s the dreaded \u201cTo be continued.\u201d The end of a therapy session can inspire difficult feelings, and rightly so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[31,49],"class_list":["post-32365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-considering-psychotherapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}