Proud Work in Progress

    I've always been the kind of person, that when somebody compliments something I worked on, or even when my therapist praises the progress I've made, I'll say something like, "Yeah, I did that, but I still want to/need to (insert goal or desired amount of progress)." I've always sort of felt like, whatever progress I made didn't deserve recognition because I hadn't reached as far as I wanted to go yet, and I could only truly be praised or celebrated or complimented when I reached the goal I had in mind. I mean, you can't say how great something is while it's still in progress, you have to see it finished to decide, right?

    I do that sort of thing a lot when it comes to dealing with my OCD and panic disorder triggers. I'll do a small exposure, and then if I don't feel like I exposed myself to whatever the trigger is for as long as I imagined I would, the mission feels like a failure. My therapist is always quick to correct me. She always points out, "Yeah. You got anxious/left/turned off the thing, but you still did it. It doesn't matter that you didn't do as well as you expected yourself to, the main point is that you did it. Then you recognized your limit, and you stopped. That's good. That's progress, and it deserves to be acknowledged."

    I actually say things like this so much in my sessions that my therapist says things like, "Did you hear what you just said?" Or, "Do you realize what you just did?" Then she always goes on to explain to me that, any progress at all, even if I fell short of a goal I had in my head, still deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated. She always lets me know that, even if I know I still have work to do in an area of my life or in dealing with my mental health, I'm still allowed to be proud of how far I've come.

    I've been in therapy for six or so years at this point, and that idea still feels weird to me. I'm supposed to be proud of and happy with how far I've come when I still have so far to go? The answer, according to my therapist, is yes. YES, I AM. 

    Here's the thing about progress for most of us, but especially for those of us that live with mental illness: progress is an ongoing journey that continues for our whole lives. Humans usually don't reach a point of progress at which they say, "Okay, I'm finished with this growth business. I've made all the progress I'm going to make in my life. I'll stay like this from here on out." When we usually begin to see growth in one area that we identified and have been working on, we pick out other things that we want to grow about ourselves or in how we deal with our mental health, and we begin work on those areas. This process goes on and on, because the more you grow, the more you can find other areas that you want to work on and improve because improving generally makes us feel good about ourselves. The goal or desired level of progress and growth just keeps changing. So, if we're not proud of ourselves and happy with ourselves while we're growing, when are we ever going to be proud of ourselves and happy with ourselves?

    I can tell you that I'm still not where I want to be in terms of progress and growth. I'm still a work in progress, and I'm probably always going to be a work in progress. That's okay. I'm still proud of where I am today because, I can tell you, it's a far cry from where I was five years ago, or even a few months ago. 

    I'll end with this: If you're anything like me, you're probably too hard on yourself sometimes (or, a lot of the time). It can feel so hard to celebrate yourself and be happy with yourself and the work you're putting into yourself when all you can see if how far you have left to go instead of how far you've come. The thing is that, especially with mental health, the whole process of progress and growth can be lifelong. So, if you're not celebrating yourself while you're a work in progress, when are you going to celebrate yourself at all?