What Happens When We Stop Putting Therapy in a 50-Minute Box?
Why longer therapy sessions unlock deeper healing and real change.
For decades, we have organized therapy around the 50-minute hour. But I think it is worth asking a different question: What becomes possible when we give therapy more time?
In my work, I have noticed that there is often a point when a session shifts.
We are no longer simply talking about what happened that week. We are past the intellectual explanation of why a pattern exists. The client is no longer giving me the polished version of something she has probably explained to herself a hundred times.
We are in it.
And sometimes, something unlocks there.
It may be an insight she has never connected before. It may be an emotional shift. It may be recognizing that something she has understood intellectually for years still carries an entirely different meaning emotionally.
That kind of work can be difficult to squeeze neatly into a 50-minute box.
This is one reason I offer longer therapy sessions and therapy intensives. The goal is not simply to spend “more time in therapy.” It is to create enough uninterrupted space to build momentum, go deeper, and complete more of the therapeutic work while we are already there.
For busy professionals, there is another benefit: therapy does not necessarily have to mean adding a standing weekly appointment to an already overloaded calendar.
I also incorporate Accelerated Resolution Therapy, or ART, into my work when appropriate. ART is a focused, imagery-based approach that uses eye movements and does not require clients to verbally recount every detail of a difficult experience. Research suggests ART may produce meaningful symptom improvement within a relatively brief course of treatment.
For the woman who tells me, “I already know why I do this. I just don’t know how to stop,” that distinction matters.
Sometimes, you do not need another hour of talking about the problem.
You need enough time, the right approach, and the space to work on what is keeping the problem alive.
