Member-only story
How to Know if Therapy Is Working
It should feel different from venting to a friend. Here’s how to assess whether you’re getting something out of your sessions.
For over a year, Lia, a Bay Area human resources specialist, felt exhausted and unhappy all the time. “I blamed it on a toxic job,” she says. “Finally, my then-partner pointed out that the issue may be something deeper.” Lia realized she was likely depressed and decided it was time to look for some professional help.
It didn’t work.
At least, not at first.
“I first went for the therapist that had a practice close to my apartment and offered evening appointments,” she says. “It took a few months to admit to myself that I always left his office feeling worse than when I went in. I stopped scheduling sessions there and did more research.”
She found a new therapist and made rapid progress, identifying and addressing the sources of her depression and anxieties. For Lia, it’s abundantly obvious that therapy is working. But it’s not always so clear-cut.
Health care needs can vary wildly from person to person, but there are some aspects of therapy that are pretty universal. If you’re not sure whether therapy is working for you, these benchmarks should help you take stock and decide whether to keep it up or make a change.
Your therapist makes you slightly uncomfortable
“Research for the last almost 100 years strongly suggests that it’s not the type of therapy you do so much as the working alliance between you and the therapist that accounts for how successful therapy is,” says Michael Karson, a professor of clinical and forensic psychology at the University of Denver.
A therapist’s role is to push you just enough into the realm of discomfort to reveal the root cause of your issues, he says. “Some therapists don’t do that. They try to make you feel comfortable, so now you just go to therapy because you like your therapist. That’s probably useful in some way, but no more so than talking to another friend or your bartender or your cab driver.”
