Often when people come to therapy their goals are focused on reducing symptoms and behaviours. For example, “I want to feel less anxious” or “I want to stop binge eating” or “I want to feel happy”. And this makes sense! Who wouldn’t want to be happier, less anxious, etc?

My experience of supporting people in therapy however is that these signs of progress are often not the ones people notice, at least not at first. Instead, I find they tend to notice the following 5 signs of progress:

1. You feel worse!

Stay with me! Yes, people often feel worse as they start therapy NOT better. This happens for a few reasons.

  • You start to become more aware of the links between past events on your current behaviours and feelings. In other words, your insight grows. And you cannot unsee what you now see and know.
  • This can be painful because a period of grief, which includes anger, often follows, where people grieve for what happened, what did not happen and how important psychological needs were not met in the past.
  • Insight also means that people are just more aware of, and have words for, their thoughts, feelings, reactions and body sensations. As a result, they notice these signs a lot more and often realize that they are more anxious, etc, than previously realized.
  • Finally, people might reduce dependence on a particular coping strategy at the beginning of therapy, such as binge eating or drug use, and the underlying feelings, memories and thoughts that the coping mechanism were masking may surface.

All these things are very positive signs because it means you are beginning to heal. Emotional healing hurts, just life healing from a physical wound hurt. You cut yourself and at first it stings and hurts like hell. This does not mean there is something wrong, instead it is the opposite. Your body is healing and doing all the things it needs to do to help your body recover. The same applies to psychological healing. There might always be a scar that hurts as times passes but the initial intense pain reduces.

2. Your relationships might change or even end

Again, I am probably not selling therapy to you right now but read on.

When you start to build insight into the effects of the past on you in the present day and you start to find more adaptive coping mechanisms to heal, other people around you may respond poorly.

A good example is chronic people pleasing behaviours. If you have sacrificed yourself for a long time to avoid conflict and be accepted, saying no and setting healthy boundaries for the first time is going to ruffle some feathers. People have grown accustomed to you acquiescing to their needs and some may not like this change and even perceive you as selfish.

It can be painful to realize that some relationships only worked because you were giving, and they were taking. You may need to grieve the loss or changes to these relationships before you establish healthier friendships moving forward.

3. You are triggered less often

Finally, a more positive sign of progress in therapy!

Often people state that they are triggered less often in their day to day lives. Things that used to trigger them all the time do not and therefore they feel more emotionally stable. This sign often occurs once people have built insight into their triggers and develop ways to either reduce the trigger in the first place or develop strategies to manage when they are triggered.

4. When you are triggered, the thoughts and feelings do not last as long and are not as intense

Therapy will never stop you from being triggered. Experiencing difficult thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories is a part of life.

However, people who are progressing in therapy often find that the discomfort that comes with the trigger does not last as long or impact their lives for as long. As is often the case after EMDR Therapy, people often state that the vividness of the memory or trigger has reduced. For example, failing an exam might still be challenging and thoughts about being a “failure” may still arise, but you feel better able to draw from adaptive coping strategies, such as self-compassion, to support yourself during this time.

5. When you are triggered and the thoughts and feelings are strong, you can use adaptive coping strategies to cope

Again, we are all human and despite our best efforts to work on ourselves, we still have strong reactions to people, places and situations. This is not a sign that you have gone backwards, and that therapy is not working.

What is a good sign though is that you considered or used the more adaptive strategies that you are working on in therapy. For example, instead of skipping a meal when your pants felt tighter, you connected with your wise adult self and remembering that feelings pass or to wear something more comfortable and were able to ride out the difficult thoughts and feelings.

All the above signs of progress tend to occur when you connect with and grow your healthy wise self. This wise part can practice mindfulness of the here and now, reparent and heal your younger parts and work with your coping strategies to build more adaptive ways to cope.

It is after this work that people also notice they are less anxious, happier and doing less of the unhelpful strategies. But this often happens later. So be patient. Therapy is not a quick fix but when you stick it out it can be transformative!