Breaking up with a therapist is hard; there’s no way around that fact. A therapist can be one of our closest confidants, and the idea of leaving them can bring up feelings of fear and discomfort. But if your therapist isn’t serving you in the way you need them to, ending your relationship can be a positive thing.
There are many reasons one might want to leave a therapist. If your provider crosses boundaries or does something unethical, that’s an immediate sign to stop seeing them. But a session doesn’t have to end in disaster for you to feel like it might be time to end things. If you feel like you’ve accomplished what you need to or you find yourself distressed after sessions, leaving might be a net positive in your life. It’s good to let your provider know if you feel unsatisfied or concerned about your therapy sessions to see if you can improve your relationship — but that’s easier said than done.
For queer people especially, breaking up with a therapist can feel even more loaded. Queer people struggle with disproportionate rates of mental health issues, and on top of that may have to search harder to find LGBTQ+-affirming providers in the first place. But it’s important to understand that you deserve a therapist who meets all of your needs, not just the bare minimum.
To help you know when and how it might be time to end things with your therapist, Them spoke with a number of queer licensed mental health professionals for their advice. Below, we’ll outline how to understand whether your therapist is serving you well, therapist red flags to look out for, ways to easily break up with your therapist, and more.
How can I tell I need to break up with my therapist?
Knowing when it’s time to break up with your therapist isn’t always straightforward. This person may have guided you through rough times in your life, and probably knows more about you than your friends and family. It’s a difficult decision for anyone to make.
Tracking progress in therapy can feel confusing. It takes a lot of insight to decide whether your symptoms are getting better, whether you’re processing emotions in a helpful way, or whether you’re just rehashing the same problems over and over again in an endless loop. If you’re going to therapy because you were symptomatic of a certain mental health disorder, like depression or anxiety, it might be good to track your symptoms daily or weekly. If you find your symptoms have decreased, maybe your therapy is working. Keep in mind that progress is not necessarily linear; look at the overall trends over a larger period of time instead of worrying about daily/weekly dips and plateaus.
Unfortunately, not all progress in therapy is tangible. It can be hard to grasp every minute change, or realize that you’re becoming more self-aware. If you feel comfortable, you should ask your therapist about what progress for you will look like. Feel free to ask what they specifically mean when your therapist says you’ve made progress today. Think about whether the mental health tools that your therapist has given you have been helpful for you. If you sit with all these questions and find that your therapist isn’t helping you, or isn’t helping as much as you want them to, it might be time to break up with them.
Breaking up with your therapist is even more difficult given how hard it can be to find a therapist; in some places, more people are looking for mental health providers than there are therapists to serve them, and for queer people in particular, finding a therapist that’s affordable, affirming of one’s identities, and accepting new clients can be a tall order. (For more advice about how to find an LGBTQ+-affirming therapist, read our guide.)
There are some clear-cut therapy scenarios that you should absolutely run from: If your therapist ever makes you feel unsafe, invalidated, or does anything unethical, like asking you on a date or flirting with you, leave them. It is not worth staying with any therapist that is actively causing you harm or making you feel unsafe. Not having a therapist is better than having one that hurts you or otherwise crosses important boundaries.
But a therapist doesn’t have to be bad for you to break up with them, either. Richard Unite and Reyna Ramirez-Guest, two New York-based clinical social workers and therapists, provided the following list of reasons you might consider breaking up with your provider:
- You feel like your work with them is done
- Sessions feel less like processing and more like weekly check-ins
- You feel like you haven’t made progress
- This therapist can’t hold your identities
- You feel that you can’t be vulnerable with them
- Your therapist is violating your boundaries
- Your therapist is the reason for distress after the session
- Your therapist isn’t open to feedback
There are cases where it’s best to stick with your current therapist. If you’ve discussed your feelings with them and they were receptive and supportive, give them a few sessions to see if there’s an improvement. You can always stay with your current therapist until you find a new one.
“If you have a safe connection with your therapist and feel open to sharing more of what feels stagnant, it’s worth bringing it up to see if that shakes things up a bit,” Ramirez-Guest says. “It should be the client’s decision how they want to move forward at this point, and naturally, some therapists offer one or two sessions to wrap things up and send you off.”
Ramirez-Guest mentions that most good therapists will understand where you’re coming from and think of ways to adjust to better suit your needs, or otherwise will be able to provide referrals to other therapists for you to check out.
Your current therapist may also be a great resource for finding a new one. For the most part, therapists won’t (and shouldn’t!) be insulted that you feel you need to work with a different person, and often have recommendations of other therapists who are better suited to your needs, which is another great reason to discuss what feels off about your current relationship.
What are therapist red flags to look out for?
If you’re seeing a new therapist, it’s good to look for potential red flags in the first few sessions so you know whether they’re a good fit. If your therapist doesn’t feel affirming of your identities, don’t stay with them. It’s going to be hard, if not impossible, to be vulnerable with somebody who invalidates you or feels judgemental of who you are. When looking for a therapist, ask them about their experience with things you identify with, such as queerness, kink, polyamory, or other identities and interests that are important in your life.
Ramirez-Guest says it’s important to listen to how your therapist talks about your mental health. Overly focusing on a diagnosis or disorder can leave your therapist without room to think about you as a person. If you feel your therapist has made microaggressions towards you and fails to correct them, it’ll be hard to use the space to process in the way you may need.
Ramirez-Guest tells Them that another red flag is when a therapist talks about themselves without leaving room for you to process your own emotions. Unite says that a therapist who projects their personal experiences onto you can develop into a serious issue in your therapeutic relationship.
They also mention that a therapist that gets defensive or vague when you bring up issues you’ve noticed in the therapy space can be harmful.
How should I break up with my therapist?
It’s easy to get trapped in your head about whether or not it’s worth breaking up with your therapist, especially if you’ve been with them for a long time. You might also worry that they’ll think the worst of you if you end the therapeutic relationship.
Ramirez-Guest’s advice for this process is to set firm boundaries, remind yourself why you need to move on, and know what you’re going to say to them when you bring up that you’re breaking off your therapist/client relationship.
“Endings are hard, but they are a part of life,” she says. “We often don’t get a platform where we can grieve properly, and having closure can be a relief.” She recommends having a face-to-face conversation in person or over video chat if you feel safe doing so, but therapists are trained to deal with difficult emotions and will understand if you don’t feel safe to have that conversation. It’s also perfectly okay to send a final email to your therapist naming why you’ve decided to break up with them if calling doesn’t feel right.
Both Unite and Ramirez-Guest agree that, if you feel safe and able to do so, it’s better to talk to your therapist about why you’re leaving instead of “ghosting” them and not showing up to any more appointments. Ramirez-Guest says that while doing so is your choice and providers won’t take it personally, it’s unconstructive to ghost a therapist that you’ve been working with for a while. Getting closure and any referrals for other therapists might be better for you than an ambiguous ending.
“Don’t feel bad if you’ve ghosted a therapist in the past,” Ramirez-Guest says. “Be kind to yourself and curious about what [you feeling more comfortable ghosting] means for you and your other relationships.”
At the end of the day, the only person who knows whether or not your therapist is being helpful is yourself. Take some time after a therapy session to figure out how it’s feeling, whether you’re making progress or not, or whether your therapist feels combative, flirty, or just like there’s something off. Remember that there are always more therapists and therapy styles out there; there’s no reason to stick with a therapist that isn’t helping you. As a little extra assurance, it’s okay to just walk out, and it’s okay to leave. A good therapist will respect and understand your decisions, and a bad one isn’t worth keeping around anyway.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.