In the cases of individual, couples, or family therapy, the emphasis may be either short- or long-term. (Group therapy tends to require a longer commitment in order to establish and maintain group coherence.) In short-term therapy, the therapist and client consider individual goals and needs and agree on an appropriate, relatively brief treatment duration (typically 4-12 weeks). This approach tends to work best when the client has specific, immediate, and relatively concrete issues to address in therapy. The client may be dealing with the death of a loved one, a career change, a recent divorce, or any other life situation which is relatively time-limited in its most acute effect. Similarly, the client may be suffering from a very specific phobia, performance anxiety, recurrent thought or other "compartmentalized" problem that disrupts particular aspects of daily life without significantly limiting his or life experience overall.

It should be emphasized, however, that there is no "quick fix" for pervasive, longstanding issues. Intense addictions, broken marriages, profound career dissatisfaction or deep existential concerns—genuinely addressing these issues commonly requires long-term work and energetic commitment to change. To truly and fundamentally "renovate" one's daily life experience, one must be willing to courageously re-examine, re-organize and re-orient certain long held habits of thinking, feeling and doing.