In today's environment, counseling may come to and after a short number of sessions or a long time period. Regardless, if you feel you have learned something and improved yourself and your situation during the course of counseling, it's important recognize the positive impact the counseling has had and express appreciation especially if you are the client. Discussing what you have gained from your sessions will serve as a reinforcement to continue acting on lessons learned and may also reveal areas where there is still potential for growth and change.

Either the client or the therapist may recognize that it's a good time to end the therapeutic relationship.The client may feel she has got what she came for in terms of insight and understanding, or the therapist may feel that he has provided as much guidance as he can provide and that the client would be better served by ending therapy at this time. It is also possible that outside factors (such as financial, insurance related, time factors, location issues) are requiring you to end before everything is resolved. Be honest about these issues so as to not leave the other party guessing.

Counseling creates a safe place to discuss your thoughts, feelings and issues and gives you an opportunity to gain new perspective and learn new ways of addressing your world and the people in it. After the counseling relationship ends, clients will continue to face the world but without this safe place to fall back. Syracuse University provides several suggestions on how to help clients leave counseling with confidence as they move forward. It is worth taking some time in the final sessions to have your counselor encourage ways that you can face new situations in their life.

If the counseling relationship is ending because of external factors that are not barriers to resuming later (such as moving out of the area), consider how permanent the termination will be and what the process might be if there were an opportunity and decision later to resume counseling. Likewise, when the relationship has been a positive one, just because the current situation has been resolved does not mean that the client will not want to come back into counseling later when some other situation or problem is encountered. Leaving the door open for the future, not just for counseling but for where life will lead, is an important way to end a positive experience on a positive note.