You Know You're Making Progress When...

[Gadgie]

You can laugh at your minor mishaps and not cower with fear or shame.

Yea! that's what I do when I'm having a good day, it's those days that keep me going, pity I don't have them more often.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

When you realize you fell back into listening to distorted thoughts. That's when you realize you can't fall backwards if you haven't gone forward.

 

[Recovery4Me]

You know you are making progress when...

*You had such a day, you wanted to have a drink, almost go to get the stuff...but you remember that it never helped to solve the problem before and the moment passes.

*You sit with a negative trigger in your presence for two days...just to show it whose boss now.

*You write the word 'flashback' and your not having one.

* You read your Trauma Diary and realized you moved forward a little.

*Your instantaneous shout-out response to a top flight cluster-f*ck doesn't include your standard explicits.

*You tell your friend that you don't care who your ex is sleeping with...just so it isn't you.:D

 

[Changing4Best]

You remember something longer than it takes to forget it, which is usually in about a minute or maybe 5 of them.

 

[The Albatross]

You know you're making progress when you volunteer for a very specific triggering situation and you manage it without disassociating and roll with it.

 

[winterose]

When you can look at your diary you wrote in sharing all the details of your hell and not see anger and wish you could be the adult you have become now to go back and get that scared kid I was.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

When you're having distorted thoughts and you know you're having them from anxiety. And you get angry at the distorted thoughts and at yourself for having distorted thoughts. And you can feel yourself getting angry at someone. And you're able to realize you're not really angry at the person but at the anxiety and the distorted thoughts.

 

[Ronin]

When you categorize your abusers as delusional and non mattering instead of believing their threats emotionally.

 

[Tinyflame]

When your SI plans get derailed & you feel a bit of happiness or kind of safer(?) :) :notworthy:

 

[Tinyflame]

Thank you @WillyKat & @Cashew for the 'likes' :hug: , as I felt silly/ kind of ashamed to say it.

Progress one should feel happy about feeling happy about it. :)

 

[Stickler]

Progress is knowing when I am triggered, being able to observe it instead of getting lost in it, and not acting out on the triggered impulses.

Progress is knowing suicidal ideation always goes away.

Progress is liking myself and believing I'm worth good stuff.

 

[Seasounds]

I know I am making progress.....

When I feel terrified to take a new risk and live through it.

... when I expressed anger to my therapist (with serious, 'boundary setting' tone of voice "I don't like what you said"), rather than express hurt (through soft tone of voice and tears-what I was allowed to do as a child-since I would be beaten).

...And when being fearful of 'being too much' I asked for/called my therapist to give reassurance/support the next day, to set a new pattern of safety expectation, (to reverse the old pattern of greater anxiety the day after setting a boundary-linked to expecting my mother's retaliation for expressing a boundary).