Here are three signs that you are progressing in your psychotherapy:
1. An Increase in Ego Strength.
Your ability to feel your emotions without feeling toppled by them is a good sign. Ego strength is not about the sense of what or who you think you are – that is more the concept of yourself, or you ‘self concept’.
The ego is the sense of being that you have. The ‘I am’ that is having the experience.
Having a strong ego essentially translates to being able to meet the experience of life as it is. Emotions are generally the signals of instinctual drives. Learning how to read them as signals more accurately, and to our advantage, is generally a step in a healthy direction. It is often when we misread these cues that we end up maladapting to the world, to other people, and to ourselves.
2. Things Can Get Worse Before They Get Better
It’s an odd one this, but, especially near the beginning of a therapeutic relationship things can sometimes feel like they are getting worse. Strangely this can be a good sign. Of course, the period that it lasts for needs to be taken into account, but generally speaking, for a certain period it is not uncommon, and no bad thing.
Sometimes, old patterns of behaviour, established in the past – e.g. the result of the patient being forced to make a poor decision in a bad situation – can amp up in intensity. Sometimes.
Sometimes this amplification of affect, of feeling our emotions, is a sign that the patient is learning to feel in a deeper way, that their ego is strengthening. This is why therapy can be uncomfortable, because often we are being called to go into the valid suffering we have been avoiding in order to release ourselves from the unnecessary suffering that we can end up repeating in an attempt to avoid facing the valid suffering, or the fear of it. This is an over simplification, and each case will vary, but the premise is generally true.
3. You Feel Better More of the Time (Except When…)
The clue is sort of in the language. Feeling Better. After all, isn’t that why we attend therapy, to heal? Perhaps the best metric for that is that we feel better. Too obvious? Well, Yes and no. Sigmund Freud, the founder of Psychoanalysis, identified a phenomena with patients he called ‘Flight to Health’ in which a patient might present as suddenly feeling much better thank you very much. This can even occur prior to a session. Previously wrapped up in symptoms when making the appointment a patient can arrive suddenly feeling much better. Or after a single session. This is not uncommon. Again, without contact it is very difficult to say when there is genuine healing taking place and this ‘flight to health.’ Psychotherapy really needs to be conducted on a case by case basis. However, the principle exists. This is another good reason why a block of sessions in a treatment plan is advised, and can be more helpful that single intermittent sessions. In the same way that a patients can suddenly get worse then they can suddenly get better.
The baseline though is still valid. If, over time, you realise that you are feeling better more of the time, then that is a good sign. If your symptoms ease, or your relationship to them changes for the better, if events, or situations, or people that you used to struggle with become tolerable, manageable, maybe even inconsequential, then these are indications that you are making good progress in psychotherapy.
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