How Often Should You Come to Counselling?

One of the most common questions people ask when starting therapy is, How often should I come? The answer is that it really depends on what you’re hoping to work through, how much support you need, and how counselling fits into your life. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but understanding the different options can help you decide what works best for you.

Attending Counselling Every 1–2 Weeks: Building Safety and Momentum

When starting therapy, coming in weekly or every other week can be especially helpful. In the beginning, therapy is often about getting comfortable, building trust, and making sense of what feels overwhelming. 

Getting Comfortable With Your Therapist

Starting therapy can feel a little uncertain or even intimidating at first. It’s a unique kind of relationship—one where the focus is entirely on you. That can feel unfamiliar, especially if you’re used to supporting others or keeping things to yourself. A good therapist will help you feel safe and understood, but trust takes time to build.

Regular sessions also help you figure out sooner if your therapist is the right fit. If something doesn’t feel quite right, you’ll know early on, rather than spending months wondering if it’s working. Finding the right therapist is important, and it’s okay to switch if needed.

Seeing Progress Sooner

Research has shown that attending therapy more frequently, especially in the early stages, can lead to faster improvements in mental well-being. A 2019 study of 2,634 individuals seeking support for various mental health challenges found that those who had more frequent sessions in the first three months experienced greater symptom relief.

Similarly, a long-term study at a university counselling center found that clients who attended weekly therapy made progress more quickly than those with less frequent sessions. Researchers referred to this as a "steeper recovery curve," meaning that people who engaged in weekly therapy tended to see noticeable improvements in a shorter period of time.

This makes a lot of sense—regular sessions provide a consistent space to process emotions, gain clarity, and develop practical coping strategies. When therapy happens more often, it helps maintain momentum, making it easier to integrate insights and skills into daily life. While everyone’s healing journey is different, having that steady support early on can be an important part of creating meaningful and lasting change.

Doing Deeper Work

Weekly counselling can help you do deeper therapeutic work.

If you’re dealing with big emotions, a tough relationship dynamic, or past trauma, more frequent sessions can be really beneficial—especially in the beginning. When sessions are too far apart, it can be harder to build momentum and start making real shifts. Therapy is a process, and for deeper work, it helps to have more consistency.

This is especially true in couples therapy. One of the first steps in relationship work is recognizing the negative cycles that keep showing up. The sooner you and your partner can identify these patterns, the sooner you can start making changes. If sessions are spaced too far apart, it can be tough to gain that clarity and practice new ways of interacting outside of therapy.

Some people worry about committing to weekly therapy, whether for financial reasons or due to time constraints. If that’s a concern, it can sometimes be more effective to attend regularly for a few months and then take a break, rather than spacing sessions out too much right from the start. This allows you to gain traction so you have some tangible things to work on outside of counselling, and helps you to see noticeable progress sooner.

Attending Counselling Every 2–4 Weeks: Applying What You’ve Learned

Once you’ve built some insight and developed tools to manage emotions, stress, or practice showing up differently in your relationships, spacing sessions out a bit can work well. This allows time to apply what you’ve learned in real life, while still having a space to check in, process challenges, and refine your skills.

Many people shift to this schedule once they feel like they’re in a more stable place but still want support as they navigate the ups and downs of daily life. This frequency is often a good balance—it keeps you engaged in the therapeutic process while giving you space to practice what you’re working on.

This stage of therapy is where you may start noticing the small but important changes that add up over time. Maybe you’re responding differently in stressful situations, feeling more confident setting boundaries, or noticing that difficult emotions feel a little easier to manage. Having sessions every few weeks can help reinforce these changes and provide guidance if you hit any roadblocks.

Attending Counselling Every 4–6 Weeks: Maintaining Progress

If you’ve done a lot of the deeper work and feel more grounded, coming in every month or so might be enough. Therapy at this stage is often about maintaining the progress you’ve made, troubleshooting when things get tough, and sometimes addressing new shorter-term issues that might arise.

Some people find it helpful to keep a therapist in their corner for occasional check-ins, even when things are going well. Others come back to therapy as needed, depending on what’s happening in their lives. Both approaches are completely valid. Therapy doesn’t have to be a long-term, ongoing commitment—many people dip in and out of it depending on their needs at different points in life.

At this stage, counselling sessions might focus on fine-tuning coping strategies, strengthening self-awareness, or addressing new challenges that come up. The goal is to ensure that the progress you’ve made continues to be sustainable in the long run.

Finding the Right Balance for You

There’s no perfect way to do therapy, and how often you come is a personal decision. Life is busy, and things like work, relationships, parenting, and finances all play a role in what’s realistic. Therapy is an investment, and for most people, coming weekly or biweekly forever just isn’t practical. And that’s okay.

Whether you need frequent sessions to work through something big, or occasional support to help stay on track, what matters most is finding a pace that works for you—one that allows you to get the support you need while also fitting into the rest of your life. 

Therapy works best when it fits your life.

Let’s find a plan that makes sense for you—book a consult to get started.