Last week, I spent quite a bit of time reviewing a grant application for a fairly complicated project. I went on the web portal that I was supposed to use to submit to my review, wrote it all up, probably about three pages worth, and pressed “save.” What I didn’t realize was that the system would not save my review until I provided a score for the grant – basically an indication of how good or high priority it should be for funding. I wasn’t ready to submit my score, so I left that section blank. A couple of days later, when I went back in to review another grant, I noticed that my previous review had not saved. All of that work for was for nothing! Or was it?
When it comes to mental health treatment and recovery, you might feel like you sometimes take one step forward and two steps back. Setbacks are normal and to be expected. You might feel like you’re back where you started, and that you have to do all of that emotionally difficult work all over again. Although addressing mental health challenges is different from reviewing grant applications, and it might sound like I’m in some kind of ivory tower, I think there are some similarities to the situation I encountered last week.
One similarity is that it’s probably not true that I have to go back and do all of the same work all over again. I carefully read and reviewed the grant application the first time around, gathered my thoughts and wrote them. In so doing, it’s almost like I cleared some pathways in my brain, like forging a new path in the forest. It’s going to be a lot easier to walk down that path than it was before I cleared it, even if I still have some extra clearing to do. When I finally get myself to sit down and redo the grant review, I will probably be able to accomplish it at least 50% faster than I did when I started.
Regarding mental health challenges, I think the same can be true. Whatever new insights you have learned about yourself, your patterns of thoughts, emotions, and actions, and all of the helpful skills that you have learned can’t simply vanish into thin air. These experiences are encoded in the neural activity of your brain. Your brain is quite literally different than it was before you went to therapy. The good thing about that is that, even if you feel like you’ve taken a few steps back, the next steps forward will probably be quicker and easier than they were the first time around.
While facing particularly stressful problems over the past several years, I have noticed this as well. When I’ve had dips in my mood, motivation or functioning, I have sometimes worried that I’m going back to how I was experiencing the problem before, that I will get stuck, and that it will be incredibly difficult to climb my way back out again. I’ve noticed, however, that climbing back out can become quicker and easier (though still difficult) over time. All of the new insights and skills that I have learned are still there, like really good climbing gear, making it easier to recover.
Perhaps remember this when you feel demoralized, and it feels like you’ve taken two steps back. See if the path forward is ever so slightly easier than it was the first time around. ~Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych