Healing or Hiding? – The Trap of Endless Therapy
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 6
- 5 min read
Emilia Valdez is the co-founder of DeMente, a mental health start-up focused on personal and professional development through workshops, group therapy and community reach-out programs. She works as a clinical psychologist in her private practice and collaborates as a professional in a foundation specialized in child abuse.
“I’ve been in therapy for years…” It’s a phrase we often hear with pride, sometimes as a shield, other times as a badge of honor. But therapy, no matter how long you’ve been in it, doesn’t equal healing if it never leaves the room.
In a world that increasingly values emotional awareness, it’s easy to confuse talking about change with actually making changes. Many clients, sometimes unknowingly, use therapy as a safe haven from life rather than a bridge to it. And when that happens, therapy becomes a form of avoidance dressed up as progress.
Being in therapy for years can be exhausting and doesn’t mean you’ve healed, especially if your life still looks exactly the same. Therapy only works when you do.
Sitting on the couch isn’t the same as standing up for change.
Hiding in therapy: A comfort zone in disguise
Therapy is meant to be a transformative space. However, it can also become a comfort zone, a place to endlessly process, analyze, and reflect without ever taking real-life action. When clients stay stuck in old stories, resist discomfort, or treat insight as an endpoint instead of a beginning, therapy can start enabling the very patterns it’s meant to challenge.
Of course, deep healing takes time. There’s no one-size-fits-all timeline, and there’s no deadline for you to finish healing. Yet staying in therapy for years without shifting your behavior, relationships, or self-responsibility isn’t healing; it’s circling.
It may be that the type of therapy isn’t suited for you, that your therapist isn’t reaching you in the best way, or that you’re not committing yourself to the process. Either way, if you’ve been in therapy forever and keep repeating the same issues, it’s probably time to reflect on what might be hindering your progress. Therapy is supposed to end at some point.
Keep in mind:
Insight is not change.
Vulnerability is not accountability.
Understanding your patterns isn’t the same as breaking them.
Real work starts outside the room
Therapy is like a gym for your emotional muscles, but unless you use those muscles outside, in real life, you’re not getting stronger.
Real progress looks like:
Having the hard conversations.
Leaving toxic relationships.
Saying no, even if it disappoints someone.
Making a choice, not waiting for clarity to arrive.
Stopping hiding behind your wounds and making actual changes.
If you’re in therapy but still blaming everyone else, still ghosting growth opportunities, and still replaying the same stories and choices with no evolution, you might be hiding behind the idea of “doing the work” while avoiding the work itself.
Your therapist should not be working harder than you in your process. It’s like going to school and never graduating. If you don’t apply what you’ve learned, you will keep failing the test.
Signs you might be hiding in therapy
You’re still processing the same issues, years later
If every session circles back to the same story with no shift in insight or behavior, it may be a sign that you’re talking about healing but not actually doing it. Many behaviors or issues might stem from the same source, but there should be new layers to unravel as you move on.
You’re emotionally dependent on your therapist
Do you feel like you can’t make decisions without them? Therapy should build confidence, not codependence. If you’ve reached a point where you feel the need to run everything through your therapist, it’s time to step back and refocus your therapeutic goals.
You use therapy as your only outlet
Growth happens outside the room. If you’re not building supportive relationships or coping skills in real life, therapy becomes a bubble. The therapy room is a controlled environment built to help you navigate situations in a safe scenario, but the test room is real day-to-day life.
You avoid closure or discharge conversations
If the idea of finishing therapy terrifies you, or has never even come up, that’s worth examining with your therapist.
Dr. Ryan Howes, PhD, in therapy, explains that although it rarely happens, an ending is the goal:
“...but in an ideal world, all therapy would provide a good ending, where loose ends are tied up, take-away points are clarified, and we share a clean goodbye.”
You confuse insight with change
Understanding why you do something isn’t the same as changing. Insight is step one. Growth is the goal: actual changes, actual evolution. It doesn’t matter how much you know about the reasons you act a certain way if nothing changes. Knowledge without action just becomes an excuse.
Therapy should empower you to leave
A therapist’s job isn’t to keep you talking forever. It’s to help you build the skills, awareness, and strength to live differently. Being discharged from therapy is a sign that you are ready. And yes, you can always come back when a new layer of life unfolds. Come back as many times as you need throughout your life, but each time, there should be a finish line in sight.
Therapy is a process, not a personality trait. It’s not meant to last forever.
Some prompts to help you self-evaluate:
What am I doing with what I’ve learned in therapy?
What would real change look like in my day-to-day life?
Am I waiting to feel ready, or am I willing to act?
Am I brave enough to leave the room and try?
Final words
Therapy is powerful and wonderful, but it’s not the final destination; it’s the training ground. If you’ve been in therapy for years and your life still feels like a repeat cycle, it’s time to ask the harder question: Am I applying the work?
Because you can know yourself deeply and still live small.
You can heal in theory and still hurt in practice.
And you can be in therapy and still be hiding from real life.
If you require support or want to further your self-awareness, therapy is an amazing place to start reframing your life. But always remember that healing means applying what you've learned, building trust in yourself, and most importantly, knowing when to leave.
Read more from Emilia Valdez Münchmeyer
Emilia Valdez Münchmeyer, Msc. Clinical Psychologist
Emilia Valdez Münchmeyer is a leader in mental health. Primarily focused on neuroscience, she invests her time in learning and teaching how to understand, rewire, and reach the full potential of mental, emotional, and spiritual development. Her love for animals inspired her to be certified as an animal-assisted therapist to further connect with her patients and encourage healing in all areas needed. ¨Your true potential is hiding behind your fears and everything everyone told you you are¨.
