How Long Should Therapy Take in a World Built for Speed?
We live in a next-day-shipping kind of world. Groceries arrive before we have finished making the list. A show gets binged before the next one drops. So it makes total sense that people often ask us the same question in a consult call or meet-and-greet: “So how many sessions will this take?” It is a completely fair question in a culture built for speed. It is also one we cannot answer with a tidy number, and we have made our peace with occasionally disappointing people on that front.
Here is the truth as we see it at OBP. Therapy does not run on one clock. Some of the work we do together is short and specific. You come in with a clear problem, we work through it, you leave with a plan and some new skills, and you are back to your life within a handful of sessions. Other work is slower and threaded through years rather than weeks.
Both are valid. Neither one is the “real” version of therapy and the other a lesser cousin.
A fair number of us on the team practice attachment-focused EMDR, and that particular combination tends to produce longer relationships with clients. Not because the work is endless, but because attachment wounds and complex trauma were not built in a single afternoon, and they are rarely resolved in one either.
How Long does Therapy Take? Where the Rush Actually Comes From
It is worth naming where this pressure comes from, because it rarely starts with the client sitting across from us. A lot of it comes from how mental health care gets paid for. Insurance plans and employee assistance programs are often built around a set number of covered sessions, six here, ten there, which quietly teaches everyone involved that a problem should be solvable within whatever number happens to be printed on the benefits booklet. That number was set by an actuary, not by anyone's nervous system.
Some of it comes from research too, and we say this as people who genuinely believe in evidence. Short, manualized protocols are simply easier to study. They fit neatly into a twelve-week trial with a beginning, middle, and end, which makes them easier to fund, publish, and turn into a tidy chart. That does not mean they are always the best fit for a given person, only that they are the easiest fit for a research design. We think the evidence base should include what actually happens in the room over years, not only what is convenient to measure in a semester.
And some of it is just the water we are all swimming in. Workplaces ask people to do more with less. Apps promise results in minutes. Even our phones nudge us toward whichever habit tracker claims the fastest streak. None of that is sinister on its own, but it does mean clients often arrive already apologizing for how long their own healing is taking, as though they are behind schedule on a project that was never supposed to run on a schedule in the first place.
We would rather be upfront about that pressure than quietly go along with it. Naming it out loud tends to be the first bit of relief in the room.
Some Work Is Short. Some Work Is Long. Both Count.
If you come to us, whether that’s Airdrie, Cochrane, or Calgary, wanting help with a specific, contained issue, a fear of flying before a trip, a rough patch after a job change, a decision you are stuck on, that work might genuinely wrap up in a handful of sessions. We will say so. We are not in the business of manufacturing more sessions than a goal requires.
But if you come to us with a childhood that left some attachment wiring a little scrambled, or a trauma history with more than one layer, the honest answer is that meaningful change there often takes longer. Not because you are doing it wrong. Because the material is genuinely bigger.
What Does Attachment Work Actually Look Like Over Time?
Attachment gets built a lot like trust on a long hike. Early on, whoever is out front checks over their shoulder every few minutes, making sure the other person is still there, still safe, still on the same path. If that check happens enough times and the answer is reliably yes, eventually the checking stops. You just know they are behind you. When that checking-in gets interrupted early in life, through inconsistency, absence, or plain bad luck, the nervous system stops trusting that anyone is actually still there, even when someone is.
Repairing that in the therapy room means showing up, again and again, long enough that the nervous system slowly stops needing to check. That is not us being slow. That is how trust actually gets rebuilt, on a trail or anywhere else.
Why Do Some Memories Take Longer to Process with EMDR or Therapy?
We often describe EMDR to clients using the image of a river. Ordinarily, your mind processes daily experience the way a river carries debris downstream, a little at a time, without much fuss. Trauma works more like a logjam. Instead of moving through, pieces of an event get stuck and back up, showing up later as flashbacks, body sensations, or reactions that feel bigger than whatever is actually happening in front of you. EMDR helps clear that logjam so the current can do what it was always meant to do.
Some of our clients arrive with a single branch caught on a rock. Others arrive with a logjam that took years to build. The size of what is stuck, not a lack of effort or willingness, is usually what determines how long that clearing takes. We would rather tell you that upfront than let you assume something has gone wrong because week six looks a lot like week two.
Fading, Not Ending: When Does Therapy Keep Going?
Long-term work with us rarely looks like a straight, unbroken line of weekly appointments for a year. It is much more common for it to ebb and flow. Clients often see us weekly or biweekly through the heaviest part of the work, taper to monthly as things settle, and then move to occasional “top-up” sessions a few times a year, checking in, tuning something up, making sure the wiring is holding under new stress. Then life hands someone a new chapter, a relationship, a loss, a career shift, and they come back to do a focused piece of work on that specific thing before fading out again.
We do not see that pattern as a client who could not “finish” therapy. We see it as someone who built a relationship they can return to on their own terms, which is arguably the point.
The Agreement Part
None of this means we are making it up as we go. Every bit of it runs through a therapeutic agreement that we build together with the client, because we are still psychologists first and trail guides second. Sometimes that agreement covers exactly what will be discussed in this one session. Sometimes it is a plan for three to five sessions to work through a specific piece. Sometimes it names a longer, open-ended arc for deeper attachment or trauma work, revisited regularly so both of us know we are still aiming at something and not just showing up out of habit. All of those are legitimate therapeutic plans. None of them is automatically better than the others.
A few of us on this team started out as teachers before we became psychologists, and that background shows up here. We know from years in classrooms, long before any of us were registered as psychologists, that people learn and change at genuinely different paces, in different styles, and through different modalities. Some people do their best processing sitting across from you in an office. Others need to be moving, which is a large part of why walk and talk sessions exist in the first place. Some clients do homework between sessions. Others process everything in the room and need the fifty minutes to be the whole container. All of it works, for the right person, at the right pace.
So if you ask us how many sessions this will take, we will still tell you the honest answer: it depends on what we are working on, how it was built, and how you personally do your best thinking. What we can promise is that we will name the plan out loud, check it with you regularly, and never mistake a longer timeline for a lack of progress. If any of this sounds like something you relate to, we can’t wait to chat about how we might build a therapeutic agreement with you. Book with us soon, and we’ll see ya!
This blog was written by Kristy McConnell, R. Psych. & Owner | Off the Beaten Path Psychology and Wellness | Airdrie, Calgary, and Cochrane, Alberta
Feeling disconnected and wondering if therapy might help? OBP offers individual counselling, Walk and Talk sessions, and intensive formats across our Airdrie, Calgary, and Cochrane locations. You don't have to have it all figured out to reach out.