Healing is Not Linear
As a therapist, one of the most common things I remind my clients is this: healing is not linear. We often expect growth to look like a steady upward climb—clear milestones, obvious improvement, constant forward motion. But real healing rarely works that way.
Although we talk about it differently, there are a lot of similarities between physical and mental health. We tend to understand this better when it comes to the body than when it comes to the mind. With physical health, most of us accept that progress takes time, consistency, and patience. We know there will be fluctuations. We expect setbacks. Yet with mental health, we often demand immediate clarity, constant emotional relief, and visible results.
Let’s talk about weight loss as a metaphor for mental health healing.
Anyone who has tried to lose weight knows that progress doesn’t happen in a straight line. Some weeks the scale moves, some weeks it doesn’t, and some weeks it moves in the opposite direction. If we only look at the last week, it may not look or feel like progress. The effort was there, but the outcome doesn’t seem to match. That can feel discouraging, confusing, or even defeating.
Zoom out just a bit further… If we only look at the last month it may look or feel like we are failing. The number might not reflect the discipline, the habits, or the changes happening beneath the surface. It can be tempting to assume something is wrong—or worse, that we are doing something wrong.
But if we zoom out and look at the big picture, we might see just how much progress we have truly made. Maybe stamina has increased. Maybe strength has improved. Maybe behaviors have changed in sustainable ways. Progress didn’t disappear—it just didn’t show up in the way we expected.
Mental health healing works the same way. Emotional regulation, self-trust, boundaries, and resilience don’t always show immediate results. Some days you may feel calm. Other days you may feel overwhelmed again and wonder if any of the work mattered. It did.
You are growing in ways that aren’t always visible. If it feels like you are stuck or falling behind, it’s important to look back and see how far you’ve really made it. You are not behind. You are simply in a part of the process that requires patience. Trust that calm does not mean stagnant…it often means progress that can be maintained.
Healing isn’t about never struggling again. It’s about building the capacity to move through hard moments with more awareness, compassion, and steadiness than before. That kind of growth doesn’t rush…and it doesn’t need to.
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