Starting therapy is an investment of your time, money and emotional energy. Between work, family, school and everything else that fills your week, finding time for a regular appointment can feel like a significant commitment. You may wonder whether meeting every other week would be enough.

At Takoma Therapy, we're committed to providing therapy that empowers people to make meaningful, lasting changes in their lives. That's why we recommend beginning with weekly sessions. Consistency helps build the relationships, understanding and momentum that make those changes possible.

Why Do Therapists Recommend Weekly Sessions?

Therapists often recommend weekly sessions because regular appointments help build trust, maintain momentum and support faster progress. Weekly therapy gives you and your therapist consistent opportunities to understand recurring patterns, explore difficult experiences and work toward lasting change. As you make progress, you may be able to meet less frequently.

Therapy is an ongoing process of building trust, understanding yourself and working toward meaningful change. Each conversation builds on what came before, and regular sessions provide the continuity that allows this process to develop.

Why Weekly Therapy Makes a Difference

Therapy takes time, particularly in the beginning. You and your therapist need to get to know each other, understand what brings you to therapy and begin identifying the patterns that may be contributing to your difficulties.

Weekly sessions help you:

• Build a trusting relationship. Regular contact helps you become more comfortable with your therapist and develop the trust needed to discuss difficult experiences.
• Recognize patterns. Meeting consistently makes it easier to notice connections between your experiences, emotions, relationships and responses.
• Maintain momentum. Each session builds on the last, allowing you to explore issues in greater depth.
• Explore experiences while they're still fresh. Events and emotional reactions are often easier to understand when you have an opportunity to discuss them soon after they happen.
• Put what you're learning into practice. You can notice something during the week, bring it to therapy and explore what happened while the experience is still relevant.

The therapeutic relationship itself is an important part of the work. Over time, your therapist learns more about your history, how you respond to difficult situations and what helps you feel understood. You also discover whether your therapist can listen carefully, challenge you respectfully and make room for disagreement.

That relationship develops through regular contact, providing a foundation for the more challenging work that may follow.

What Happens Between Sessions Matters

Some of the most important moments in therapy happen between sessions.

You might notice yourself reacting differently to a familiar situation. Something your therapist said may come to mind during an argument, or you may begin to recognize a pattern in your relationships that you hadn't noticed before. These experiences become part of the next conversation. You can explore what happened, what you felt and what you might be beginning to understand about yourself.

Meeting weekly allows these conversations to remain connected. You have time to experience life outside therapy while keeping the previous session fresh enough to build on. With longer gaps between appointments, more life accumulates. You may have several situations you want to discuss, and a significant portion of your session can be spent catching up. This leaves less time to explore the underlying issues in depth.

Does Weekly Therapy Lead to Better Results?

Research suggests that how frequently people attend therapy can influence how quickly they improve. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology examined therapy outcomes for more than 21,000 clients. Researchers found that people attending weekly sessions achieved clinically significant improvement faster than those attending approximately every other week. The overall amount of improvement was similar between the groups.

Read the study by Erekson, Lambert and Eggett (2015).

Other research examining session frequency has also found that the time between appointments can influence the pace of improvement.

Individual needs and circumstances vary, and the right schedule depends on the person and the work being done. Still, these findings give us good reason to consider frequency when planning treatment. Regular appointments can help you build momentum and make progress toward your goals over a shorter period of time.

What About Every-Other-Week Therapy?

Every-other-week therapy can be helpful, and there are circumstances where it makes sense. You may have practical or financial limitations, be working toward a specific goal or have reached a point in therapy where less frequent support is appropriate.

It's worth understanding how the longer gaps can affect the process. When you meet every other week, the work will generally take longer in calendar time. Getting to know your therapist, recognizing patterns and developing the continuity needed for more difficult conversations may unfold more slowly. And if you miss just one appointment, an entire month can pass between sessions. That can make it harder to maintain momentum, especially when you're beginning therapy or working through longstanding difficulties.

Sometimes people choose biweekly therapy because they want to save money or time. That's understandable. However, it's worth considering the pace of your progress alongside the cost of each appointment. Weekly therapy may help you reach your goals sooner, although the total number of sessions needed will vary.

We recognize that weekly therapy can be difficult to manage. If cost, work schedules, caregiving or other responsibilities make regular appointments challenging, talk with your therapist about a schedule that is realistic and clinically useful.

Do You Have to Attend Weekly Therapy Forever?

For most people, therapy isn't forever. We believe that good therapists should always be working themselves out of a job.

Our goal is to help you understand yourself, make meaningful changes and develop healthier ways of responding to life's challenges that you can sustain long after therapy ends. As you make progress, you and your therapist can decide when to reduce the frequency of your appointments and, eventually, when you're ready to finish therapy.

The Bottom Line

If you're investing in therapy because you want something in your life to change, it's worth giving the process the time and consistency it needs.

Some sessions will feel more productive than others. You may leave one appointment with a new understanding of yourself and another with more questions than answers. All of this can be part of the work. Your therapist has a responsibility to provide thoughtful, engaged care, and your regular participation helps that work develop.

We recommend beginning with weekly therapy because we want you to make meaningful progress and, ultimately, develop changes you can sustain long after your final appointment.

Getting Started With Therapy at Takoma Therapy

Takoma Therapy offers therapy for adults, children, teens and families, with in-person appointments at our Takoma Park office, conveniently located near Silver Spring and the Washington, DC border. We also offer virtual therapy for clients in Maryland and Washington, DC.

We work with clients who have CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Aetna, Cigna and other insurance plans. Coverage varies by plan, including whether services are available through in-network or out-of-network benefits. Our Intake Coordinator can help you understand your options, discuss availability and find a therapist who may be a good fit.

Ready to get started? Explore our therapy services, meet our therapists or contact our Intake Coordinator to discuss beginning weekly therapy.

About the Author

Simone Jacobs, LCSW-C, is a licensed clinical social worker, founder of Takoma Therapy in Takoma Park, Maryland, and author of The Paradox of Surviving Childhood Abuse and Neglect. Her clinical approach emphasizes understanding the experiences and patterns that shape behavior, developing meaningful therapeutic relationships and helping clients make sustainable changes in their lives.

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