How Often Should You Have Therapy? What Every Woman Needs to Know

When you’re considering starting therapy, one of the most important — and often overlooked — questions is how often you’ll be meeting with your therapist.

On the surface, it can feel like a practical decision (time, money, diary space). But in reality, the rhythm of your therapy sessions plays a huge role in how deeply and effectively you’re able to heal.

For some people, fortnightly therapy can work well. But for others — especially those exploring childhood emotional neglect, attachment wounds, or any form of trauma — I typically & wholeheartedly recommend a weekly therapeutic rhythm for the kind of lasting, embodied change that I offer.

In this blog, I’ll explore why, and I’ll walk you through the key things to consider when choosing between weekly and fortnightly therapy.

Why Weekly Sessions Often Create the Deepest Healing

1. Emotional healing needs consistency and containment

If your therapy is beginning to explore themes such as:

• Feeling unseen or unsupported in childhood

• Relational trauma or emotional neglect

• Anxious or avoidant attachment patterns

• Trauma connected to major life transitions — such as relationships, grief, identity shifts, pregnancy, birth, fertility journeys, etc.

  
  

…then weekly therapy provides the steadiness and safety needed to hold these experiences with the stability & compassion they deserve.

When we start to unpack old pain — especially pain you may have learned to minimise or push down — you need a reliable therapeutic space that holds you gently and doesn’t let you drop.

In my clinical experience, trauma work simply isn’t as effective, nor does it feel as emotionally safe, when attempted within an every-other-week rhythm. Weekly therapy helps us stay close enough, often enough, to your emotions and your nervous system for real, lasting change to unfold.

2. You may have trauma to process, even if you don’t identify it as “trauma”

Many of the women I work with initially come to therapy for what seem like “everyday” struggles:

• Chronic anxiety

• Low self-worth

• Overworking or perfectionism

• Difficulty saying “no”

• People-pleasing

• Feeling overwhelmed or emotionally exhausted

• A sense of “not enoughness” that never quite goes away

  
  

These patterns are often seen as just part of modern life — part of coping, functioning, or trying to hold everything together.

But more often than not, they are signposts toward earlier emotional wounds:childhood emotional neglect, attachment disruptions, developmental trauma, or long-standing patterns of minimising your own needs.

These are not personality flaws. They are adaptations — intelligent ones, born from a younger version of you who didn’t feel fully seen, supported, or emotionally held.

Weekly therapy gives us the consistent space to gently explore these deeper layers — without losing momentum or having to start again each time.

3. Weekly sessions create more momentum, which means faster progress

A concern I hear often is:“I don’t want to be in therapy forever", which is a very understandable wish.

And yet, paradoxically:

Weekly therapy is often the quickest and most cost-effective route to long-term change.

Fortnightly therapy may feel more manageable logistically or financially, but progress can be slower because:

• More time is spent catching up on life events

• Emotionally, you may feel like you’re starting over each session

• We lose some continuity with the deeper work

  
  

With a weekly rhythm, even if life brings cancellations at times (as it inevitably does), the work remains more grounded, connected, and continuous.

Weekly sessions offer:

• More emotional regulation between sessions

• Less recapping, more depth

• A stronger therapeutic relationship

• A steadier pace that supports genuine transformation

4. Weekly therapy offers more emotional holding in the midst of a busy life

Modern life — for women at any age or life stage — is emotionally demanding.

Many women I support are juggling multiple roles, caring responsibilities, identity shifts, career pressures, relationship complexities, and old emotional wounds that have quietly shaped their lives for years.

It’s incredibly common to push your feelings aside because “there’s no time to feel all that.”

Weekly therapy can become the one space where:

• You don’t have to hold everything together

• You don’t have to be strong or composed

• You get to be fully supported, emotionally and psychologically

  
  

With a weekly rhythm, it’s easier to stay connected to the more vulnerable parts of you who are finally being seen — whether that’s the child who felt invisible, the young adult who coped alone, or the woman who hasn’t had space to process the intensity of her life experiences. And it is only through gentle, consistent, supported contact with this vulnerable self that we have the opportunity to heal, get unstuck and grow.

5. Prioritising weekly therapy is often part of the healing itself

It’s so common for women to believe that their needs must come last.

Work first. Family first. Everyone else first.

Your care becomes optional — something you squeeze in if there’s time (and there never is).

But the belief that you don’t have time for yourself is often part of the very wound we’re working to heal.

For many clients, committing to weekly therapy becomes their first true act of self-honouring:

• A choice to matter

• A decision to stop abandoning yourself

• A shift from “I should cope alone” to “I deserve support”

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This is not indulgent — it’s reparative.

When you show up for yourself weekly, you are gently rewriting the internal script that says your needs are secondary. You are practising a new way of relating to yourself: one rooted in care, worthiness, and compassion.

When Fortnightly Therapy May Be Right for You

There are times when a fortnightly rhythm can be appropriate — particularly if:

• You’re seeking support for a short-term or specific challenge

• You’re already well into your healing journey and want ongoing reflection or maintenance

• Your emotional or practical capacity is limited right now

  
  

Fortnightly work can absolutely be meaningful — but it’s helpful to know that it may involve more time reconnecting or catching up, which naturally slows the deeper process.

If your intention is to explore longstanding patterns, relational wounds, or any form of trauma, weekly therapy will almost always serve you better — and feel safer, too.

In Summary

I wholeheartedly believe that for most trauma, attachment, and deeper emotional work, weekly therapy is safer, more transformative, and ultimately more cost-effective.

Weekly therapy provides:

• Consistency

• Relational depth

• Emotional containment

• A steady pace that supports lasting healing

  
  

If you’re beginning to explore your past…

If you’re navigating overwhelm, identity shifts, or long-ignored emotional pain…

If you’re realising how old patterns still shape how you show up in the world…

Then weekly therapy is a gentle and powerful gift you can offer yourself.

A space for integration. For cycle-breaking. For liberating yourself from old ways of coping. For finally being seen in the ways you’ve always deserved.

If you’d like to explore weekly therapy with me, I’d be honoured to walk alongside you.

Wherever you are in your life — early adulthood, postpartum years, midlife, or beyond — you don’t have to do this alone.

Feel free to reach out to me, and we can explore what rhythm of therapy feels most supportive for you right now.

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I'm Dr. Jenny Turner, Clinical Psychologist, Mum and founder of Mind Body Soul Psychology - a specialist, trauma-informed, private psychology service for women.

I can help you at any stage of your life journey - whether you need support to enter adulthood, navigate perimenopause, heal from trauma, finally transform your relationship to your own anxieties, shame, guilt, rage and/or overwhelm - I can support you to enrich your life & relationships.

I offer online appointments to women based all over the UK, and I offer in-person appointments in Ripon, North Yorkshire - click here to find out more: www.mindbodysoulpsychology.co.uk

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