"I have no time for therapy": what it looks like with a job, children and one free evening

“I know it would help me. But — when?” I hear that sentence often and every time I believe it. Someone with a job, two children, parents who need help and one free evening a week does not have an invented problem with time. They have a real one.

At the same time I notice something else. For many people, lack of time is not the only obstacle but the most acceptable one. It is the reason you can say out loud without exposing yourself. “I have no time” is safer than “I’m afraid of what will come out.”

So this piece does both. First I break down, quite practically, how much time therapy actually takes and how people fit it into a packed week. Then I look honestly at what sometimes hides behind not having time.

How much time therapy actually takes

Let us look at the numbers, because they are kinder than the feeling.

A session lasts 50 minutes. Add travel in both directions and in Ljubljana you are at roughly an hour and a half to two hours. With fortnightly sessions that means about three to four hours a month — less than one episode of a series a week, less than the average adult spends on social media in two days.

Remote therapy halves that figure: 50 minutes, no travel, from a room at home or from the car outside nursery. Research over the past decade shows it is as effective as in-person work for most difficulties — I have written separately on the advantages and limits of working remotely.

For comparison: a single sleepless night spent worrying costs you more energy than the whole monthly session. The unpleasant difference is that you do not have to decide on the sleepless night.

How people I know fit it into a week

A few solutions that work more often than others.

• An early slot before work. Seven in the morning, before the day starts. For many the calmest part of the day and the only one nobody else can take.
• The lunch break. Fifty minutes by video from the car or an empty meeting room. Not ideal, but feasible — and feasible beats ideal.
• A slot during a child’s activity. The hour your child is at training is an hour you already spend waiting.
• Fortnightly instead of weekly. For many topics an entirely sufficient frequency, and it halves both time and cost.
• A swap, not an addition. The people who last are those who did not add therapy to an already full list but replaced something else with it.

That last point matters most. If you add therapy on top of a full schedule, you will cancel it in two months — not from lack of motivation but because you placed it in the most fragile spot in your week.

Why it often pays off most for the busiest people

Here is something counterintuitive. People with the most packed diaries are often the ones who get the most out of therapy in the shortest time.

The reason is simple: they tend to be highly functional, used to reflecting, and arrive with a clear question. They do not need months to open up. They need a space in which they can stop responding to other people’s demands for an hour.

Besides, the time consumed by symptoms is usually greater than the time therapy would take. An hour of brooding each evening is seven hours a week. An argument that drags on for three days is a lost weekend. Insomnia is a stolen third of your life. Added up, therapy is not spending time but investing in it — I have written separately on how much time rumination eats.

When lack of time is not the real reason

Now, honestly. If you have read all of the above and still feel resistance, it is worth looking deeper. A few patterns I meet often.

Fear of what will come out. Somewhere you know you have kept something shut for a long time, and you sense that opening it would move all of it. This is not an unfounded fear — therapy does bring to the surface things that were put away. Except that it happens at a pace you set, not I. I have written about it in fear of therapy.

Busyness as a defence. A full schedule is an efficient way of never having to meet what would surface in silence. If a free afternoon grips you with restlessness and you immediately find a task, that is information, not character.

A sense of not being entitled. An hour for yourself is hard to justify for someone who has spent a lifetime caring for others. “I have no time” sounds more acceptable than “I don’t feel I deserve it.”

Doubt that it will help. If underneath you think this is paid listening, of course you will not look for an appointment. A legitimate concern, answered by data rather than promises — on the effectiveness of therapy and the research.

None of these observations is a reproach. But they are useful, because something can be done about a real obstacle and nothing about an invented one.

How much the thing you are not addressing costs you

Any calculation of time for therapy is incomplete if you do not put on the other side the time that unprocessed distress consumes. That cost is invisible, because it never appears in a calendar — and it is usually larger.

Rumination. An hour of circling thoughts each evening is seven hours a week, roughly twenty-four days a year. That is not a rhetorical flourish but simple arithmetic. For comparison: fortnightly therapy takes about forty hours across a whole year.

Insomnia. Someone who sleeps six hours instead of seven and a half because of worry loses about ten hours a week — not only of time but of capacity. The next day is slower, which shows in everything they do that day.

Arguments that drag. A conflict that lasts three days in a couple instead of half an hour means a lost weekend. For a couple who argue like that twice a month, that is roughly two months a year in a tense atmosphere.

Postponement. A decision you weigh for six months takes far more attention than one you make in three weeks — even if the outcome is the same.

The point of this calculation is not pressure. It is only a reminder that the comparison is not between “an hour a fortnight” and “nothing”. It is between an hour a fortnight and what the current state costs you.

What the data says about dropping out

Since lack of time is the most common reason given for ending therapy, it is worth looking at what actually happens.

Meta-analyses of dropout show that roughly one person in five ends the process early. What is interesting is when: most dropouts occur in the first few sessions, before someone has really decided, and during the period when the work becomes uncomfortable.

That means two things. First, those who get past the early stretch usually stay — the initial obstacle is the biggest. Second, when someone starts pleading time exactly as the conversation has become harder, time is almost certainly not the real reason. That is useful, because something can be done with it: tell your therapist you are thinking of stopping. It is often the most productive session of the whole process.

A second piece of data worth knowing: a large share of improvement happens relatively early. Classic research on the relationship between number of sessions and effect shows that a considerable proportion of people experience a noticeable shift within roughly the first eight to ten sessions. For someone afraid of entering an endless process, that is important information.

What about the time between sessions?

A common worry people voice only later: whether therapy will also demand homework, diaries and exercises. The answer depends on the approach and is worth asking about in advance.

Cognitive behavioural approaches usually do involve work between sessions — thought records, gradual exposure, sleep exercises. This is not a marginal detail: with these methods the work between sessions carries the effect, so the real time investment is greater than the session itself.

Systemic, experiential and psychodynamic approaches usually do not set tasks in the school sense. Something else happens, though, which is worth naming: you begin to notice. After a few sessions you will catch, mid-argument or mid-brooding, what is going on — and that noticing takes no extra time, because it happens in situations you are in anyway.

What does take time is a third thing: the period after a session. Many people need half an hour to return to the day after an hour of concentrated attention. If you have a meeting straight after therapy, you will be worse at it. When planning your slot, allow half an hour more than you think — or choose a time followed by something soft.

For many the most practical solution is a late-afternoon slot before a free evening, or an early morning with a slightly slower start to work. Both are feasible more often than they seem, if you arrange it in advance.

Three rules for a schedule that lasts

From experience with people who kept therapy going for more than six months, three things recur.

A fixed slot, not arranging as you go. Same day, same hour, booked months ahead. It sounds rigid and is precisely the opposite — arranging as you go means deciding afresh every week, and every week there is a good reason why this week does not work. A fixed slot removes the decision.

A slot that does not depend on others. An hour tied to childcare, a partner’s schedule, or whether a meeting overruns will sooner or later collapse. An hour before work or during a break is often less pleasant and considerably more reliable.

An agreed rule for exceptions. Illness, work trips, a child’s flu — these will happen. If you agree in advance what then (video instead of in-person, a replacement slot in the same week), a missed session does not become the beginning of the end.

When the obstacle really is external

Everything above applies to someone with at least some control over their schedule. Some people have none, and talking to them about priorities would be unfair.

Shift work. Someone working three shifts cannot have a fixed weekly slot. What works in practice is an agreement for two standing slots in rotation, or fortnightly frequency with dates set three months ahead.

A single parent with no childcare. Here remote work is often the only feasible form. Many have sessions in the evening once the child is asleep. Not ideal — interruption is always possible — but considerably better than nothing.

Caring for a sick relative. This group is among the most burdened and among those who least often seek help for themselves. If you are in this position, it is worth knowing that shorter, time-limited forms of support exist that do not require a long commitment.

Financial hardship. When the real reason is money rather than time, it is better to name it — there are routes people do not know about. I have gathered them in what psychotherapy costs and what to do if it is too much.

In all these cases the same applies: tell the therapist at first contact. Many adjustments are possible if known in advance, and impossible if they emerge only at the third cancellation.

The smallest possible first step

If any of this spoke to you, you do not need to overhaul your schedule or commit to a year of work on yourself.

One introductory session is enough. Fifty minutes, with no obligation onwards. After it you will know two things: whether this way of talking suits you, and whether we are right for each other. That is the whole investment the decision requires.

And if you cannot fit even that into your week — that is in itself an interesting piece of information about how your life is arranged. Worth talking about, when there is time.