Setting Long-Term Therapy Goals

If you are beginning your therapy journey, or if you feel like your long-term therapy has hit a lull, you may wonder how to get the most from your treatment. Setting long-term therapy goals can help you transform sessions from a chance to have a good conversation (and possibly a good cry), to meaningful treatment guiding you toward lasting improved mental health.

Common Goals for Therapy

Mental health treatment isn’t like setting a broken bone or using medication to clear an infection. Psychotherapy isn’t about a doctor or mental health professional trying to “fix” what is “wrong” with you. Instead, a psychotherapist helps patients along a path to self-improvement, providing them with tools, strategies, and guidance to address their symptoms and increase their healthy coping skills. 

Successful treatment depends on patients’ ability to set and achieve their mental health goals. But often, therapy begins with a patient having only a very general sense that they want to “feel better,” “be happier” or “worry less.” Finding a successful path to better mental health depends on setting clear goals for what you want to achieve through your long-term therapy. Common therapy goals can include:

• Accurate diagnosis of mental illnesses and comorbid conditions
• Reducing mental health symptoms
• Developing coping mechanisms
• Improving emotional regulation
• Increasing mindfulness
• Develop communication skills
• Learn emotional intelligence
• Improve self-esteem and self-worth
• Interrupting intrusive thoughts or compulsive behaviors
• Self-discovery
• Responding to life stressors and interpersonal conflict
• Developing life and career goals

Goals in Long-Term vs Short-Term Therapy

Depending on your goals, you may be better served through short- or long-term therapy. Short-term therapy can help you obtain specific skills or strategies – such as learning healthy coping mechanisms. It can also aid you through transitions such as: 

• Divorce 
• Breakups 
• Job loss 
• Grief 
• Childbirth 
• Marriage

In contrast, long-term therapy and ongoing consulting are better suited to address ongoing issues and psychological conditions like depression, anxiety, or PTSD. 

Because of this different focus, the goals for short- and long-term therapy are different. While short-term therapy goals may address identifying opportunities to use coping mechanisms, or to recognize and respond to emotions related to the challenging life event. In contrast, long-term therapy goals are often more far-reaching, based on your ideals and life priorities, while also making space to respond to more immediate concerns, such as flare-ups of mental health symptoms. 

How to Set (and Meet) Long-Term Therapy Goals

Setting long-term therapy goals is a crucial part of any successful treatment plan.  Don’t think of these steps as occurring one-by-one, in order. Instead, you can move back and forth between the following steps, adjusting your focus based on what is happening in your life, and your progress along your mental health journey.

Step 1: Work with an Experienced Psychotherapist

It is important to work with an experienced psychotherapist when defining your long-term therapy goals. Your mental health professional can help you clarify your vision for success, define your priorities and address your needs. 

Step 2: Define Your Broad Therapy Goals

Your “gut-feelings” about why you need therapy is a good place to start in defining your therapy goals. Thoughts like a desire to “be happy,” “not be afraid,” “get unstuck,” or “quiet the self-harming thoughts” can point you in the right direction to define effective goals. Your psychotherapist can help you brainstorm what those broad goals may be, and then refine them into actionable goals.

Step 3: Pick a Theme for Therapy

Often, especially if you struggle with multiple comorbid conditions, have a complicated home life, or face multiple stressful situations, you may need to focus on one theme or priority at a time. For example, you may choose to focus on one environment – like the workplace – or one set of symptoms. The clearer your focus, the better you will be able to target your treatment for success.

Step 4: Identify What Success Looks Like

Therapy can feel unending because it is hard to see incremental progress. That is why it is important to take time to define what success looks like in objective, concrete ways. This transforms broad goals like “be happy” into something you can track using tick-boxes and time frames, like “have four positive experiences each week.” 

Step 5: Develop an Action Plan

The long-term therapy goals you set can seem out-of-reach, at least at first. But that is okay. Once you know what the end looks like, you and your therapist can create an action plan for how you will progress toward meeting those goals. Your action plan might include:

• Breaking a goal into smaller objectives
• Reading, viewing, or learning about new techniques
• Practicing techniques
• Applying strategies in different settings or circumstances

Step 6: Track Your Success

An essential part of your long-term therapy is tracking your progress toward your goals. Often, visual progress trackers like check-boxes or posters can provide a mental boost every time you take a step forward. Tracking your long-term goals is also necessary to know when it is time to revisit the plan and shift your focus.

Step 7: Refine, Refocus, and Repeat

The benefit of long-term therapy is that it can be adjusted over time as your needs or priorities change. Periodically during therapy, it will be appropriate to revisit and reset your long-term therapy goals, either because a different focus or strategy is required, or because you have reached your initial goal. During these refocusing periods, you and your psychotherapist can decide whether continuing therapy is appropriate, or whether you have reached a new phase in your mental health journey.

David Stanislaw is a psychotherapist with over 35 years of experience. He helps adults, teens, and children, meet mental health goals through short- and long-term therapy. Contact David Stanislaw to get help today.