I had too much therapy. Here’s how I quit and found happiness

I found therapy in 2013, just before I turned 20, and it’s probably fair to say it saved my life. I was studying at the London School of Economics, which was filled with competitive, overachieving A-types, and I was struggling with the academic and social pressures. I also found the shift from the rigidity of school to the freedom of university overwhelming. Meanwhile my parents’ relationship was on the brink of ending and, like many twentysomethings, I was finding the trials and tribulations of becoming an independent adult challenging — discovering who I was alongside the pressures to make new friends, pursue romantic relationships, get internships, be thin and beautiful … It was a time of instability and I needed support.

The sessions at a small practice in central London always had a similar structure. I’d engage in slightly awkward small talk when I arrived. I would walk over to the couch. Then my therapist would ask how I was and this would cue up my monologue.

I found it uncomfortable to speak at first, but within a year or two I knew how the process worked and wasn’t afraid to share my darkest thoughts and most vulnerable feelings. I’d sit down and get straight to it — diving into some of the more gruesome dimensions of my eating disorder, talking candidly about my childhood, about the fears I had around sex and intimacy. All of this was stuff I hadn’t shared with anyone else before.

And I learnt a lot about myself. After the sessions, which cost £60 for an hour, I would often feel bad: deep emotional wounds were being brought to the surface and this was tough and confronting (although it took me nine years before I cried in a session). Therapy made me grow up quickly. But I also became better aware of my emotions and how to regulate them. I got better at communicating my thoughts and feelings rather than masking them with my coping strategies of food and exercise.

I took antidepressants for about six weeks, but being very aware of the negative side-effects I stopped taking the medication and stuck to the psychotherapy. Over time I conquered my depression.

I think many of us feel lighter when we start therapy. There is something quietly life-changing about someone sitting opposite you for 60 minutes and just listening to you. In my early twenties, especially, I think what I really wanted was certainty. I wanted to be told: “Yes, the way that person treated you wasn’t good, and what you think and feel is totally reasonable,” or “No, you are not too fat or too needy or too bossy.”

Therapy also helped me to toughen up a bit. At first I was a people-pleaser who struggled to be assertive and offer my own opinions. By my mid-twenties I was more self-assured, and I credit therapy for that.

In other ways I remained fragile. Whenever things were tough and didn’t go my way I fell to pieces. I found it hard to process conflict or failure on my own. I found myself desperate to book a therapy session as soon as something “bad” happened, and almost unable to function until I’d consulted my therapist about it. I’d solicit her advice before I sent texts to men I was dating or before booking a holiday. I needed the sign-off — or validation — from my therapist that what I thought was rational.

I also began to realise all my navel-gazing was making me self-centred. In disputes with my family, my friends and my boyfriends I could see onlymy side of it. I’d demand that my parents do things in certain ways that were right for me but not necessarily right for them. Exes called me out for my double standards: I would insist they give me the time to make decisions, whereas I expected them to respond immediately to me, to prevent me from going into an anxious spiral. I was so concerned with getting my needs met that I would often neglect those of others.

Prendergast: “I believed I could no longer think or feel without therapy”

PAUL STUART FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

I can’t be the only one. The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy recorded a 27 per cent increase in membership between 2020 and 2023, while the NHS reported a 21.5 per cent rise in the number of people accessing talking therapies for conditions such as anxiety and depression between 2021 and 2022.

In so many ways it’s a good thing that mental health is a part of the cultural conversation. And it is understandable that many people feel anxious about the state of the world. We are more stressed but less afraid to say so.

Yet we are also seeing a boom in casual therapese: words such as “projection”, “trigger” and “boundaries” are flippantly rattled off. We diagnose exes as narcissists and accuse our politicians of gaslighting us. Reality TV shows such as Netflix’s Couples Therapy — set to return this year for its fourth season — hit podcasts by Esther Perel and “TikTok therapists” such as Dr Julie Smith, who has 4.7 million followers, have helped to turn psychotherapy into entertainment. It’s reasonable to wonder if this is a good thing.

I can see now that I had developed a dependency on therapy. I believed I could no longer think or feel without it. If my therapist went on maternity leave, or even on holiday for a few weeks, I would have a strange feeling of abandonment and find myself unable to function fully until she returned.

This seems particularly strange because therapists are the first people to label relationships unhealthy. It’s surprising to me that my therapist failed to acknowledge my dependency and call me out on it.

Now, aged 30 and therapy-free, I do worry that all those years of introspection, of unpacking trauma, diving deep into my past and peeling back the layers of the psychological onion, may have made me into — well, a bit of a monster. I worry that therapy hasn’t built my resilience but has instead made me more fragile, encouraging me to look backwards and to ruminate on the bad parts of my childhood, on regrets and missed opportunities. My anxiety hasn’t gone away, and in many ways I worry more because therapy has taught me to analyse so much of my life. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming. I regret how much therapy I’ve had.

Above all, though, I wonder if my relationship to therapy had actually been inhibiting my real relationships. Life is messy and people are flawed. If therapy enables you to cope better with these realities, it’s probably helping. But if you’re finding yourself becoming more sensitive to life’s ups and downs, it’s probably better to sack off the shrink and get back into the boxing ring of life. That’s where you’ll find me from now on.