When you’re a therapist and you lose patients who you don’t feel like are ready to discontinue therapy, you want to know why they stop seeing you. With an outcome tracker from MyOutcomes, you can get this information and record feedback to better serve your patients. If you’re curious why some people stop seeing their therapist, we’ve put together a list of six common reasons. Now, these might not all apply to you, but these are some results that we’ve found.
Rather talk to friends or family
Speaking to a therapist can be a daunting experience. This is a new person your patients are letting into their lives and sharing some of their deepest and most intimate feelings with. For some people, they might get to a point where they don’t feel as comfortable speaking with somebody who isn’t within their inner circle or isn’t seeing what’s happening in their life first-hand. While an outside perspective is often one of the best places to get advice, it can be frustrating to not receive the validation they’re looking for from an outside opinion. This is often why people would rather speak to family or friends than a therapist.
Feel too much pressure
Change can be extremely difficult. If a person is feeling pressured to change or feel a certain way about a current situation or something from their past, they’re not going to want to continue to explore those feelings. Unfortunately, there are people who say that they believe their therapist was putting too much pressure on them to open up about a certain incident or feelings that they weren’t necessarily ready to share.
Guided conversation
Talk therapy can be an effective method to opening doors into an individual’s thoughts and feelings about life experiences. While it’s common to allow the patient to guide the conversation, it’s not unusual for patients to feel like the therapist is guiding the conversation. This means that questions are asked in an effort to get patients to jump to conclusions or ask questions about themselves that are incorrect. Those who experience this will either backtrack or close themselves off from a therapist entirely.
Don’t have the time
People are busy. From work to home life to running kids to where they need to be, it can be tough to find time for ourselves. People who stop seeing their therapist will sometimes cite a lack of time. This could mean that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day throughout the week to visit a therapist or even that they don’t feel like they have enough time for themselves.
Felt like it didn’t work
We live in a results-based society that often doesn’t have time to let things simmer. You understand that therapy takes time to see lasting results, but your patients might not feel the same way. Many people want to start to see results immediately. They want fast food rather than planting a garden and if a patient wants the fast-food version of therapy, they’ll often stop seeing their therapist.
Contact us to learn more
If you want to learn more about why people stop seeing their therapist, you can get information from an outcome tracker with MyOutcomes. We offer tracking software that will help you get feedback and a better understanding of why patients move on from their therapist. Send us a message to get started. We want to help you improve how you serve your patients.