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Ghosting reinforces the very patterns therapy is meant to change.

Openly ending therapy allows you to be heard and respected in conflict, building emotional growth.

A healthy goodbye builds agency, reduces shame, and helps you assert needs and strengthen life relationships.

Ghosting refers to the deliberate and complete withdrawal from communication without explanation. While the term is commonly associated with dating or friendships, ghosting can occur across many types of relationships and commitments. Individuals may ghost a romantic partner, a friend, a job, a personal passion, or even a therapist. Ghosting may stem from fears of abandonment, a desire to maintain control over outcomes, avoidance of confrontation, or simply a loss of interest.

In our culture, we’re not very good at healthy goodbyes. Things like the internet have made ghosting even more prevalent, especially because online relationships may be intentionally vague or fleeting. This also happens in therapy, where a client begins working with a therapist or even has a long-term therapeutic relationship, and they cancel or miss an appointment and do not give a reason. The therapist calls the client, emails them, and sends them a letter encouraging them to come back for at least one session to have a healthy goodbye, and they don’t follow through. In my practice, I make a point during intake appointments to stress the importance of a healthy goodbye in which we go over their progress and put either a period or a semicolon to the work we did. I even put this in my therapeutic contracts.

Even so, the client may never come back or decide to just take a break.

Ghosting happens too often in therapy. One week, a client seems fine with their sessions, and the next, they’ve disappeared. No goodbye, no explanation; they’re simply gone. As a result, both the therapist and the client have missed some important and valuable benefits. And to some degree, so has the therapist in terms of the work they did and how they cared about the client and the therapeutic relationship.

All relationships rely on........

© Psychology Today