Guest blog by Rebecca Muir, LSW
Just because you have a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year, this doesn’t mean your progress is lost. Challenges, slips, backsliding into old behaviors, or a resurgence of unwanted symptoms do not nullify therapeutic progress. It just doesn’t work that way. Thinking all progress is lost is an example of a cognitive distortion or “thinking error” in the vein of black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking.
Rather, progress is progress. A recent perceived failure cannot lessen the importance of the existence of progress we have already made. What we learned and the successes we achieve through therapeutic interventions stay with us, even if we forget about it or simply cannot access it at that moment. We learn, we grow, we fail, we try again, and we gradually get it right.
To put progress in another context, let’s look at progress in the arena of substance use disorder (SUD) and recovery. For many, a slip, lapse, or relapse into using a substance can trigger a feeling of losing all the progress made in their recovery. This notion is even reinforced by some 12-step programs that reset the sobriety clock when a lapse occurs. For many, this is a disparaging and discouraging way to view their “lack” of progress.
I think it’s important to pause and look at the facts of what has happened. An individual with some accumulated time in sobriety has a slip, and subsequently feels guilt, shame, and/or a loss of hope. They can choose to focus on how they don’t have their streak of sobriety days racked up as they did the day before, or they can really look and see that all the days they remained abstinent didn’t just disappear because of the lapse. Over time, days in recovery add up. That is undeniable progress for someone who struggles with SUD. Days in recovery do not disappear. They are forever part of that individual’s story and progress. (I will say, though, that it is important to debrief from a relapse and to shift factors that may have led to this experience of “re-growth.”)
Related Reading: Relapse in Addiction Recovery
The same is true for therapy – focus on facts. Progress may feel slow to nonexistent at times, but the who you are today is fundamentally different than who you were when you first entered therapy. If you have a bad day and happen to throw all your helpful therapy tools out the window (things like coping mechanisms, utilizing self-care, meditation, taking care of your physical body, etc.), all this means is that you had a day where the progress you have made and your ability to access the tools that day weren’t enough to support you in the challenges you were facing. The tools don’t disappear, and the days when you do use them are still a part of your story. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day of more progress.
Celebrating Small Wins in Mental Health Therapy
Self-doubt, negative self-talk, and that pesky internal critic are the real obstacles and barriers to more progress. They lie to you and steal your motivation. Just showing up to a therapeutic session or a recovery group shows progress. Many people never make it through the door, let alone stick around to do the hard work. So give yourself credit where credit is due. You are making progress, and you are doing the hard work! Recognizing your actions steps can be helpful in overcoming self-doubt about therapy progress.
Don’t get me wrong – frustration with not seeing the therapeutic results you want as quickly as you want them is understandable. Whether it’s symptom relief, processing grief, shifting the emotional intensity of trauma, or just feeling happier, progress can’t come soon enough.
Despite the natural desire for a quick solution, mental health improvements are typically achieved through a slower process of consistency, intention, and self-compassion. In many instances, the areas your desire to see progress in didn’t appear overnight. Changing these things won’t happen overnight either.
This, however, should not be a source of despair. Breakthroughs do happen and certain therapeutic modalities, such as EMDR and RRT, can frequently create a noticeable shift in a short period of time. Mental health, like physical health, is something you must work towards and actively maintain on a daily basis. There is no one-time magic solution.
It’s important to learn to become your own best friend and supporter, your own greatest asset for your mental health, every day. Self-love, self-compassion, and faith in one’s innate ability to heal and grow are a necessary foundation for all progress. Once you have this foundation laid, you may be surprised to see how quickly you might flourish.
Signs You’re Making Progress in Therapy
So how do you know if you are making progress? Often, intentionally focusing on positive changes helps you to recognize the progress you have made. In assessing different dimensions of wellness, the Wellness Wheel is a helpful visual to categorize the dimensions of health and wellbeing. While there are many versions of the Wellness Wheel with different, fewer, or more dimensions, let’s look at the version provided by the New Hampshire University as shown below.
This Wellness Wheel identifies dimensions of wellness that include social, occupational, environmental, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial components. Mental health is not a stand-alone dimension of human experience. Therefore, in reviewing your progress it is helpful to look at all areas of improvement since therapy began.
You may wonder what having a padded savings account or a clean and pleasant house has to do with therapeutic progress, but they are intrinsically connected to your therapeutic progress in this understanding of multidimensional wellness as illustrated above.
Research tells us that when you feel secure in your job and happy in your home environment, you see a positive correlation to your overall mental health. When you feel strong and happy with your physical appearance, this in turn contributes to a positive mood and increased emotional stability. When you have trusted and supportive friends and a sense of connection to spirituality, this strengthens your ability to feel loved, safe, and joyful. Enhancing your intellectual exploration and positive experiences with friends, family, and even by yourself all contribute to your overall mental health.
Ask yourself “What dimensions of my life have improved since starting therapy?” Maybe you go for more walks or spend more time doing self-care. Maybe you get up a little earlier and get a little more done than you used to. Maybe you have a new friend or a new community that you spend time in. All these things can highlight your individual and therapeutic progress.
Therapeutic Progress Despite Continued Symptoms
What if you are thinking “But what about the negative symptoms I still experience? What about the relief I am seeking?” If you’re looking at progress in the context of undesired symptom reduction, a journaling exercise may be helpful to look at your journey more critically:
- Have your symptoms decreased in intensity, frequency or duration some of the time?
- Do you react differently to things than you used to?
- Do your challenges feel more manageable?
- Do you feel more hopeful or less hopeless?
- Do you feel more supported by others in your quest for better mental health and symptom relief?
- What has changed, and what has not?
- If you struggle to find any positive changes on which you can focus and give yourself praise and motivation to keep going, ask yourself, honestly, why do you think nothing has changed?
In Substance Use Disorder recovery there is a common saying one may hear at peer support groups that goes, “Nothing changes, if nothing changes.” This means that if you don’t take the action steps to do things differently, you cannot expect things to change spontaneously.
This does not negate the power of an insightful new perspective or a helpful new framework through which you might see the world. Helpful concepts and emotionally charged epiphanies can be powerful and life changing, but when it comes to your everyday lived experience, you cannot expect change to happen without consistent effort to make it happen.
If you feel stalled in your therapeutic progress, ask yourself how you might implement additional action steps towards achieving your goals:
Change is often found just on the other side of fear. Finding the courage to push through this fear can be scary, but the reward is great. Therapists at Life Care Wellness can help you find the courage to commit to more progress today. Please contact us in our Glen Ellyn, Chicago (Jefferson Park), and Sycamore offices.
Rebecca uses several therapy approaches with clients. These include CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), Strengths-Based/Solution-Focused Therapy, and Talk Therapy. She loves incorporating mindfulness-based strategies during therapy and encourage clients to use them outside of sessions to help create a more peaceful, joy-filled life. Rebecca sees clients in the Glen Ellyn office.
