The Personal Growth Two-Step

It can be frustrating to measure the progress of personal growth that is a result of talk therapy. This change is often slow and incremental, and we want results now. Especially after we’ve spent a good amount of time working to identify the issues about ourselves we want to address. That in and of itself is a victory. To be able to identify specific issues about yourself you want to change is a win. It can often feel like you’ve been on a long hike, climbing a steep hill, and you’re looking forward to cresting the hill and seeing your final destination laid out in front of you. However, what often happens is you make the difficult climb, get to the top of the hill, and look over the other side only to see another hill for you to climb. Life, am I right?

This feeling isn’t restricted only to the beginning stages of talk therapy. It’s something that occurs throughout the process, and throughout life. We feel like we are doing the work we need to do to get us to the finish line and finally get to start enjoying life as our new and improved selves, but eventually see that there is no finish line, and that the journey, the ups and downs, the progression and regression, the work, this is how life really plays out. This frustration is often expressed by clients as a feeling that for every two steps forward they take, they take one step back. This is said with such a negative connotation that I sometimes have to double check what was said. Was it one step forward and two steps back? Because that would certainly be depressing. That would mean that no progress would ever be made. We’d be moving backwards. That I could see as being truly disheartening.

However, when we say two steps forward, one step back, we’re making progress. We’re moving forward. Perhaps the frustrating thing is that we expect personal growth to happen in a straightforward way. We don’t always appreciate the two steps forward part of it because we’re too busy thinking about the one step back we just took. So, if you find yourself feeling discouraged with the back-and-forth nature of personal growth, try to continue to appreciate the two steps forward part, but let’s rethink the one step back aspect. Instead of a step back, let’s think of it as a break. A pause. A moment to stop and reflect on our path, the progress we’ve made, and what’s impeding that progress. Instead of feeling like we are not progressing in this moment, let’s think about it as a chance to recharge and prepare for our next two steps forward. And consider this: The nature of the personal growth and change we seek requires that we take a step back every now and then. That we encounter difficulty. That we struggle. That we doubt. That we fail. And it is through this failure that we learn how to change. In fact, it might be that it is this failure that forces us to change. When we protect ourselves from failure, when we simply do not try to change, then we remain stuck.

Two steps forward, one step back is not a negative situation. It’s the natural progression of things. That one step back can be anticipated when things are going well, and just as importantly those two steps forward can be anticipated when things are not going well. When I’m working with clients who voice this two-step phenomenon in a negative way, we work on reframing it into something positive, a sign of progress. Then, after that next instance of two more steps of progress and one step back, we are able to appreciate this as a sign of growth and feel good about it, as opposed to a sign of failure that we should feel bad about. Two steps forward and one step back will eventually win the race. We just have to accept that it’s going to take a bit longer than we thought.