Attendance in Therapy

By: Veronica Salcido-Rodriguez AMFT

Therapy consists of a lot of different pieces that come together in a weekly one hour session. One of the most important pieces is that of attendance and consistency. Therapy is interesting in that you talk to someone once a week for about an hour over a period of time. Over that time you hopefully form a connection with your therapist, open up and express your feelings, work towards your goal, and heal from wounds. It can be a difficult but also wonderful journey but one very important thing about the process is consistency in attendance. Imagine opening up about something important and impactful and not being able to meet for a week or two. It can make it difficult to come back to the topic or discuss it. The space in between can make it difficult to find a flow or might make it so that other things need to be addressed because new stressors occurred during the gaps of not meeting. Granted there are going to be moments where sessions need to be cancelled like in the case of vacations, illness, and emergencies but these are understandable and happen. The real concern is when a client continually misses many sessions over a period of time.It can be hard to form a connection when sessions are cancelled time after time and it can be hard to discuss topics and continue to process themes when this happens. There are things clients can do before starting therapy that can help with that. They can look at their schedule and try to save the space for it so that work, family, school, meetings or appointments do not interfere. They can see if therapy is appropriate for them, is this the right time to start if there is so much going on in my life, can I make therapy one of my priorities? Lastly looking into biweekly or flexibility of self and therapist. Will I be able to reschedule and still meet my sessions once a week or would it be better to meet every other week? Therapy is a huge commitment and an important question you can ask yourself is, am I ready for therapy?