It's Time To Quit Your Therapist

Quitting your therapist is the ultimate test. Oh, you spent the last five years telling this stand-in parent figure all about your inability to confront people, and now you want to confront him? You’ve talked his ear off about how much you regret cutting loved ones out of your life, and now you’re giving him and his $75 cash co-pay the boot, too? What, you think you’re finally too good for this shit now?

This, at least, was the kind of internal monologue that took over my life for a few stressful months in 2022, when I decided I was finally ready to move on from my first therapist. Dr. R was kindly, warm, and perfect for the 23-year-old version of me who left that tearful message on his office voicemail one day after reading his Psychology Today profile at a co-worker’s recommendation.

We hit it off right away, and I went on to spend a good chunk of my twenties sitting in his windowless Chelsea office every Monday evening, unwinding the thicket of fears that seemed to have a stranglehold on my otherwise supremely comfortable life. He had a knack for metaphor—there were a lot of sailing and tennis ones, Dr. R being a New England Wasp to the bone—and citing the occasional Taylor Swift lyric. What more could I want?

I had never experienced this kind of relationship before, one that was so objectively transactional yet completely tolerant of literally whatever I wanted to talk about. He talked me through—or should I say, he let me talk myself through—breakups with friends, breakups with lovers, new jobs and shifting family dynamics. I was surprised how much I enjoyed therapy as a place where my ability to tell stories and creative narratives was prized; I imagined myself as everyone does, to be Dr. R’s funniest patient. Shortly before 2020, we decided that I was ready to graduate from therapy, AKA I was fixed forever! Shortly after 2020 began, for obvious reasons, I started back up with Dr. R again. At one point, he mused almost absentmindedly that he was probably the one person in the world who understood me the best.

But within a few years, I started to chafe at our sessions. Eventually, Dr. R’s advice began to feel reductive and repetitive; I found myself wondering how many times he would quote “Blank Space” to me before I began screaming. It was likely time to graduate—again—but I wasn’t brave enough to cut the cord completely. I wasn’t done with therapy yet; I was just kind of done with the man who saw me through this part of my twenties. That was what made me feel the guiltiest. I’d read once somewhere that the therapist you choose often mirrors the type of person you need validation from—and for me at the end of my twenties, a white middle-aged dad figure was no longer the vibe.

Instead, I imagined an older sister for myself: someone less willing to indulge my shit, someone who got it at a cellular level when I agonized over men and parents and friends. And maybe race. On Headway, I discovered that you could literally filter for therapists by race, gender and location—and with a few clicks, I had pages of sage-looking Asian women whose credentials and therapeutic approach I could read without ever leaving a single voicemail. Like a divorcée secretly stowing her things away at a new apartment, I began lining up phone sessions to screen out my new therapist before ever breathing a word of the incoming separation to Dr. R. This meant, hilariously, that for a few months in 2022, I was actively seeing two therapists at once. (Heaven, really, for someone who lived by dint of her groupchat focus group).

Once I settled on my new therapist—a young Bushwick chick with streaks in her hair, who looked like the type of girl who would have encouraged me to sneak out of study hall—I knew it was time to start incepting my departure with Dr. R. Week after week, I began dropping hints about wanting to dig into certain family things more, or wondering aloud what having an older sister would be like, or stating vaguely that I felt ready for my life to change.

After a few months, I came right out and told him I was ready to move on. He seemed only slightly surprised: we promised each other a couple more weeks of sessions, just to make sure the feeling was real. And then, on our last session, he seemed almost merry as we said good-bye on Zoom. It was, I think, our final lesson: that we both always knew I could leave, but it only happened once I was finally ready.