Why I Quit Therapy

When Good Therapy Isn’t the Right Therapy

Most of what I have written about therapy comes from gratitude. I’ve been lucky to work with therapists who changed my life and taught me how to love all the parts of myself. But not every experience in therapy has been healing, and the one that wasn’t ended up teaching me too.

I’ve written about my positive experiences as a psychotherapy patient on and off over the last thirty years. I’ve told you about the three therapists who raised me, the amazing women who modeled how to stay steady, how to witness, and how to love all parts of myself, even the ones I hid away. They each helped save me and helped me rebuild myself from the ground up (https://becomingreal.substack.com/p/the-therapists-who-raised-me).

But that isn’t what I want to write about today. Today, I want to write about the therapy that failed, or rather, the therapy that failed to help me.

It’s notable that, despite how much I’ve written about therapy, I’ve never mentioned this one. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it in decades. But this was the therapy that taught me what therapy is not, at least for me.

I found this therapist when I was just beginning college. If you don’t know my story yet, I was seriously ill with anorexia in high school. Back then, I was in an outpatient treatment program that involved twice-weekly therapy, nutritional counseling, family sessions, and group therapy. It was intense, and while my progress was nonlinear, I eventually found my way back to a healthier body.

Treatment did not end because I was all better. It ended because I moved halfway across the country to start college. While my body was technically healthy, my parents were rightfully fearful about how the pressure of college and independence might affect me. Even I was afraid. I knew that while I looked fine, my symptoms had simply gone underground. I still lived with obsessive thoughts, strange eating rituals, and a constant battle with my body.

I was good at hiding it, and although I no longer met criteria for anorexia or bulimia, my relationship with food and myself was far from healthy. As much as I wanted a clean slate, I knew I needed continued therapeutic support.

Because I went to college in a small Midwestern town, treatment options were limited. I eventually found a provider in a city about forty-five minutes away. It was a long drive, but she specialized in eating disorders, and that was enough for me. She was young enough to feel relatable and pleasant enough to seem safe.

After reviewing my history, the first thing this therapist did was hand me a workbook. She explained that she practiced cognitive behavioral therapy and that her job was to help me interrupt the patterns that kept me stuck.

I wasn’t quite eighteen, and I didn’t know much about cognitive behavioral therapy. More importantly, she didn’t know much about me, about what I had been through or what I needed, before she prescribed a standardized workbook for eating disorders. I went for several sessions, but the drive was long and the value felt minimal, so I stopped going. I don’t remember her name or even her face.

I didn’t think about it again for years. But looking back now, I can see that those few sessions quietly turned me off to therapy. It would take nearly a decade, and another relapse, before I tried again.

To be clear, there was nothing bad about that therapist. As a clinician myself, I often use cognitive behavioral techniques. CBT is considered the gold standard for many psychiatric conditions. And while there are bad therapists out there, the therapist who didn’t help me wasn’t one of them. She was probably skilled and has likely helped many people recover. So why didn’t it help me?

Here is what I have come to understand: a structured, manualized treatment delivered by a skilled and well-intentioned clinician failed me because it was not what I needed. In fact, it has never been what I have needed. I suspect it never will be.

Remembering that long-buried experience reminds me of something I have always believed as a therapist: therapy is more art than science. I learned a great deal in my Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology, but nothing has taught me more about what healing requires than sitting on both sides of the therapy room.

The most important thing I have learned over the years is that therapy is not one size fits all. Each patient brings a unique story, history, and temperament. A good therapist learns those details, listens deeply, and discerns what their patient truly needs. Sometimes a therapist who is brilliant for one person can be ineffective for another. The difference lies in presence, attunement, and goodness of fit.

I have been lucky to work with three therapists who did get me, who learned my story, my patterns, and my pain. They did not get there by following a manual. They got there by staying with me, witnessing me, and remaining steady even when I couldn’t.

What the therapist who didn’t work for me never understood was that I didn’t need to be fixed. Even when I managed my feelings by making myself disappear, efforts to fix me only deepened my struggle. What helped me heal wasn’t behavioral correction but consistent presence and a caring witness.

That is what good therapy has always been for me: a relationship that helps us return to ourselves, a reminder that we are already whole, even when we can’t see it yet.