Time limits make sense in many areas of life. But not in healing. Not in therapy. And certainly not when we’re working with complex trauma.
Too often, I meet people who have been offered six or eight sessions of therapy — sometimes as little as a single hour per week — and then expected to “pick up the reins” and carry on. Alone.
We know why this happens. Funding. Staffing. Systems under pressure. It’s not that individual professionals don’t care — many do. But when services are shaped by cost rather than compassion, the result is always the same: the person gets squeezed into a model that doesn’t fit them.
And those time limits send a message.
“Try harder.”
“Heal faster.”
“You should be better by now.”
This pressure is the opposite of what trauma survivors need.
For those living with the effects of complex trauma — long-term abuse, neglect, fear, loss, shame — healing is not linear, and it’s never quick. The nervous system doesn’t respond to pressure by settling. It responds by shutting down or speeding up. Neither of which supports reflection, insight, or regulation.
And beneath all of this, it taps into something even deeper — the early, unspoken beliefs many trauma survivors carry: I’m not good enough. I’m too slow. I’m not trying hard enough. These beliefs were often formed in childhood, in environments where love was conditional, safety was unpredictable, and performance was the only path to approval. When therapy is limited by time and framed around progress, it risks reinforcing these very wounds. The healing space becomes another place where the old story plays out: You’re too much. You’re not enough. Hurry up and get better. This doesn’t just stall healing — it perpetuates the cycle.
And yet, I’ve heard therapists justify time limits with phrases like, “We don’t want clients to become dependent on therapy.”
Curiously, the same concern doesn’t seem to apply to medication.
Many of the people I work with have been prescribed anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants for decades — often with no review, no therapeutic input, and no alternative offered. There is no rush there. No cut-off date. No limit placed on pharmaceutical dependence.
But offer the same person the chance to talk, to build trust, to process their experiences in relationship with another human being — and suddenly we’re watching the clock.
You can’t fast-track trust.
Eight sessions — that’s eight hours — is barely time to build any relationship, let alone a therapeutic one. Especially for people who feel about as far removed from safety and connection as it’s possible to be.
True healing happens in safe spaces, over time, in relationships that are steady, honest, and consistent.
Being trauma-informed means we meet people where they are. We honour their pace. We don’t pressure them to change on a schedule. We create space for safety, for understanding, for feeling — and for silence, too.
Because healing can’t be rushed. It never could be. And it never will be.