Quitting Therapy Taught Me That We Should Change Our Minds More Often

An open love letter to my therapist and Klay Thompson.

“Oh, um, last thing. I’ve decided that I would like to end my sessions.” It was June 2020, three months into lockdown, and the pandemic was ravaging the world. People I knew were grappling with their changing mental health and how to address it; I was forty-eight minutes into a weekly fifty-minute therapy session, and calling it quits.

“I don’t really see a point to this right now. Life is moving so slowly. There’s nothing new to talk about. There’s nothing I can do to work on what we’ve talked about,” I said to my therapist.

“I can see the progress you’ve made since we started together. Here are the ways.” He listed the ways. “And I can also see how I can continue to help you.” He listed the ways. “The slower times are ones when we can dig deeper and make real change. But this is your decision. If it feels right to stop, we should stop.”

“Yeah, I think we should stop our sessions.”

“Okay well, we also have to stop for today.”

I had intentionally waited till the last possible moments to share my desire to quit. This way he won’t have time to try to change my mind. I closed my laptop and stood up. No more therapy—time saved, money saved, decreased screen-time, decreased indoors-time. This was, unequivocally, a great idea.

I quit therapy for the reasons I specified to my therapist: With life moving so slowly, there was just nothing to “talk about.” Before pandemic, my therapy sessions were a windy road that mimicked the windy road that was my spontaneous, relationship-rich, fast-paced life. Now, there was none of that. My mind was made, and I felt good about my decision.

In the six months that followed, I made gradual, continual changes to my life to keep things exciting. Though I made these changes against the backdrop of a global pandemic, they consumed me with shiny newness and to-do lists as life changes do even in normal times. These changes properly allowed me to ignore the “longstanding stuff” that I’m always dealing with. I got an eight-week-old puppy and raised and trained her. I moved apartments and lost myself in furniture and decor decisions. I changed jobs and tried on a new “workaholic” persona.

And then, all those things became part of my “slow” pandemic life. As they took up less of the spotlight, the “longstanding stuff” reappeared. It was unsettling, disorienting, and honestly, quite inappropriate for this stuff to enter my new life uninvited. And yet, here it was.

I struggled with how to approach this. An obvious solution was to start therapy again (it was now six months since I’d quit). But every time this option bubbled up in my brain, I silenced it. I criticized myself for being a flip-flop: I previously decided that therapy was useless during slow pandemic life, and we were still in pandemic life, so why would I go back? And not just why, but how? How could I accept that I misjudged my own needs?

Finally, in a moment of what I then saw as weakness (and what I now see as ultimate strength), I wrote a letter to my therapist.

While I am grateful to be healthy and have made some life transitions that are meaningful to me even agnostic of the pandemic, I still struggle (expectedly) with so much of what was at the core of what you were working through with me.

Recognizing that my core internal struggles do not make themselves sparse even in slower life, I am wondering if you currently have availability and desire for a "new" former client. I truly valued the relationship we were building and would love to return starting in January.

I didn’t exactly beg, but I did plead. He wrote back with classic therapist stoicism.

Good to hear from you. Your update highlights what is moving fast in your life as well as what endures. I’m glad to learn about the appearance of Emdash!

I have time available. We can begin meetings as you suggest. 

I restarted therapy one year ago.

My 2021 was void of conventional “big life changes.” It was instead one of calm routine and small joys. Aside from progress in science and politics, it was comparable to the “slowness” I felt at the beginning of pandemic. But this time, the slowness didn’t make therapy feel “worthless.” In fact, it allowed me to go deeper, to turn ideas over in my mind and with my therapist, and to (not just once) change my mind. It was the deep digging my therapist had described when I asked to quit.

When I quit therapy and things still felt “off,” I changed whatever I believed was causing that instability. In making those changes, I was subconsciously avoiding a deep-rooted and intangible instability. Instead of (or in addition to) making those life changes, I needed to change my own mind about how therapy could provide momentum even in “slow times.”

Scientists have researched why we humans struggle to change our minds—even in light of new data. There may be evolutionary reasons. We are also inhibited by our biases. In a 2017 New Yorker article titled, Why Facts Don’t Change our Minds, Elizabeth Kolbert writes, “But no matter how many scientific studies conclude that vaccines are safe, and that there’s no link between immunizations and autism, anti-vaxxers remain unmoved.” This certainly hits some sort of way in today’s climate.

We necessarily expend energy trying to change other people’s minds. Why not channel some of that energy toward our own?

During my “slow” 2021, I read Praying With Jane Eyre by Vanessa Zoltan, a close read of Jane Eyre, as if it were a sacred text. The most memorable passage is one where Zoltan analyzes Jane’s fleet and return to Rochester:

We need each other. That’s why I really think it might be best to break our own hearts, to prove that we can survive anything and then still love the cause of our heartbreak—whether that be a friend, a sibling, a daughter or a lover. We need community. And we need to remember how strong we are on our own.

We have to be willing to walk away from someone for our own sake. And we have to be willing to go back for the same reason.

What strikes me about my resignation from and entreaty to recommence therapy, is the comforting acceptance with which my therapist allowed both. He did not disagree or encourage me to rethink my departure and there was no “I told you so,” when I asked to return. Beyond a lack of judgment, he offered an abundance of support. This was a meta therapy lesson for me. I am an intuitive decision-maker, and my decisions always feel right “at the time.” But I rarely allow myself to even consider changing my mind when the times change. Perhaps because I don’t want to see myself as flaky, or perhaps because I fear others thinking of me as such.

We live in a world where increasingly, our beliefs are tied to our identities. So it may seem like when we change our minds, we change ourselves in some earth-shifting way. Do we then need to change our friends, our partners, our jobs, our Home? Maybe, but likely not.

I’m now trying to approach “changing my mind” the way I approach rethinking an impulse purchase (and damn is it easier to keep an item than to face Online Returns). In 2021, I changed my mind about moving to Seattle; my baking plans; not drinking alcohol; the right job role; a piece of artwork; sharing my writing; what I need from a relationship; my love for Klay Thompson (just kidding that will never ever change—love you longtime Klay!!); and that’s only the start of the list. I am only now confessing these changes to myself and to you.

There is an obvious balance. We need to sit with our choices to see how they blossom. But decisions, relationships, preferences, and beliefs can and should change based on new experiences, data, environmental change, and our own contemplation.

In the words of one of my best friends, “We need to keep unturning stones and gathering new data points.” I’m reminding myself, and this week I also reminded her and two others: We change our minds, and it’s okay. It’s allowed. It’s necessary. I’m here for you if and when you do. And that’s one thing I’m not changing my mind about.