Posted by Dinah on July 13, 2004, at 8:28:13
In reply to If I'm Making Progress Why Don't I Feel Like I am?, posted by Poet on July 12, 2004, at 23:11:34
I think Miss Honeychurch is right. It's hard to see our own progress. I might think "I'm not getting better. I'm still having meltdowns." and then someone who knows me might say "You're doing so much better. Your meltdowns are coming much less often, and you're recovering much quicker." And it comes as a genuine surprise to me.
My therapist is one person you can use as an external check on your progress. There may be some others you can trust as well?
The other thing is that when we start medications and therapy, we might still feel lousy, but it might be a different kind of lousy. The medications might cause side effects we never had to deal with before. The therapy might stir up things that have laid silent.
I think feeling lousy in a different way than we felt lousy before is progress. Which sounds odd, but hear me out. Our old lousy feelings and poor ways of coping are deeply entrenched. If medications and therapy disrupt our old patterns and cause some new patterns that feel just as bad, we don't feel like we're making progress but we are. Because the new problems aren't as deeply entrenched and can be more easily changed.
And sometimes change is just slow. My own change is glacial, but it does happen.
Do you still feel bad in the same way you used to feel bad? Do people around you think you've changed? Have you changed a bit, but not as much as you like? Or is everything exactly the same as it was? In either case, it's definitely something to discuss with your therapist.
Good luck, Poet.
poster:Dinah
thread:365517
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040703/msgs/365593.html