Caring for Your Mental Health in the New Year: Why You Shouldn’t Quit Therapy When Your Deductible Restarts

The new year is just around the corner, and there’s no better time to prioritize your mental health. If you’ve already begun your therapy or medication journey, the new year is a great chance to resolve to continue working toward healing.

Therapy practices typically see a spike in new patients over the holiday season, but unfortunately, it’s also common to see patients step away from therapy in late December and early January due to their health insurance resetting for a new year. With a renewed deductible to meet, patients often tell themselves they’ll pause therapy until they’ve met their deductible, and then come back; however, getting re-engaged in therapy can be challenging.

Keep reading to learn more about how you can best care for your mental health in the new year—and why a big part of that is being consistent with therapy.

How Your Health Insurance Works

Insurance can be confusing, so let’s break down the basics:

• At the beginning of each year, your plan resets and you have a renewed deductible—a specific amount you have to pay out of pocket for health services before your insurance will provide coverage.

• Once your deductible has been met, you’ll pay a fixed fee, or copay, for each visit. This fee is typically between $20–$50. If your insurance plan doesn’t have a copay, you might have coinsurance, which means you pay a percentage of the appointment cost instead of a fixed fee.

Therapy definitely feels more affordable once you’ve hit your deductible for the year. Instead of paying for your full visit, you’re only paying your copay or coinsurance. Because of this, many patients take a break from therapy at the beginning of the year, saying they’ll come back once their deductible has been met.

Unfortunately, pausing treatment can complicate your mental health journey, and inadvertently may actually make your healthcare bills higher. Engaging in mental health care and treating mental health problems can lead to greater overall health functioning, while ignoring your mental health can not only put a toll on your mind, but your body as well.

Don’t put your progress on hold—keep your momentum moving forward with continued treatment.

(Wondering if a superbill is an option? Click here to learn everything you need to know.)

Caring for Your Mental Health in the New Year: 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Quit Therapy

You deserve to care for your mental health in 2026—and that starts in therapy. Here are five reasons why you shouldn’t quit as we head into January.

1. You Could Lose Momentum

We all know the age-old principle that an object at rest stays at rest, while an object in motion stays in motion. When you’re in therapy, your mental health journey is actively in motion—and the last thing you want to do is lose that momentum.

Therapy builds on itself. After each session, you’re taking what you talk about and learn in therapy and carrying it with you throughout the week until your next appointment, where you’ll learn and grow even more by building on last week’s progress. Even in the seasons where growth feels slow, it’s steady—and that consistency is key to caring for your mental health.

2. You May Set Back Your Relationship With Your Clinician

In each session of your treatment, you further develop your relationship with and trust in your therapist. You’re keeping them up to date on your life, mental processes, and everything that you’re currently going through.

When you take a break from therapy, that relationship is naturally set back. Suddenly, you have a lot to fill your therapist in on—and that trust you’ve built by consistently showing up each session might not feel as deep when you’ve had a long gap between appointments.

3. Your Therapist’s Schedule Might Fill

It’s inquiry season for therapists, and just because you pause attending sessions doesn’t mean that your spot will stay open forever—or at all.

By pausing therapy, you risk losing an appointment time that works for your schedule. Even worse, you risk losing your therapist altogether, and could put yourself in the position of having to start fresh with a new therapist.

4. You Need to Process the End of the Year

The end of the year can be a lot, and often it’s more triggering than we expect—or even realize in the moment.

With strained family relationships, heightened stress, and the existential questions that often accompany a new year—or unmet expectations about where you thought you’d be—the end of the year can offer a lot to reflect on and work through. Without your trusted therapist, you may struggle to process everything on your own.

5. It’s Easy Not to Return at All

How many habits have you promised yourself you’d keep only to eventually let slide?

Maybe you told yourself you would start running, or would read instead of scrolling TikTok before bed. Then, one thing led to another—you decided it was no big deal to skip a run or two, or that you’d just give yourself a few minutes of scrolling.

The next thing you knew, months had passed and the habit you’d planned to implement has disappeared completely.

Therapy is no different. When you stop going to therapy, it can be difficult to go back for a number of reasons. Old anxieties about starting therapy can pop back up again, or, like so many other things in life, reasons to put it off just keep emerging.

You tell yourself you’ll start back after things settle down at work. Then you tell yourself you’ll start back after that upcoming trip. But then things are busy with life demands, and without even realizing it, a full year has passed since you stepped away from therapy, fully intending to return—but never making it back.

Your mental health deserves better. You deserve better—to live the life you aspire to.

Make Therapy a Priority in 2026 With Aspire Psychology

At Aspire Psychology, we would be honored to support you as we step into the new year. Whether you need help navigating your insurance logistics or are just looking for a compassionate, patient-centered therapist to come alongside you, our team is here for you every step of the way.

Say yes to a brighter year—get started with Aspire today.