It can be challenging to gain specific analytics that determines whether or not therapy is successful. Progress of therapy for mental health is something that can be hard to measure since every person may get help through therapy for a different need and have different goals. But, every individual can look at their own goals both objectively and subjectively and consider their specific needs for therapy to help to identify whether or not they’re making progress.
Being objective is when you can look at things considering only the facts without taking your feelings into consideration. So, objective successes in mental health therapy are things that you can physically measure and count. Identifying some of the objective successes that you’re experiencing throughout therapy can help you identify whether or not you’re making progress. Some examples of objective successes throughout mental health therapy can include:
You may not seem objective successes on a daily basis throughout therapy. And, you may backtrack a bit. This is because therapy success isn’t sequential. Furthermore, goals and success may look different from person to person because no one person’s story with mental health is the same. But, identifying and tracking your accomplishments with objective success for therapy can help you see the progress you’ve made. Some ways to do this is by writing down your goals at the beginning of your therapy journey, tracking your emotions and symptoms, and even writing down some of the things you want to improve like your sleep patterns. After a while, you’ll begin to notice that this information is changing in order to notice your objective success overall.
Being subjective is considering your feelings and opinions rather than facts. So, many of the goals that you’ll track during your time spent in therapy will be subjective. But, because our emotions change and they aren’t physical, subjective goals can get looked over and become challenging to track. But, it can be helpful to monitor your emotions during the therapy process so you can better determine if you’re meeting your subjective goals. Things you can track that are subjective during therapy include your self-confidence, the relationships in your life, and the things you learn about yourself. To better understand where you are with these goals, it can be helpful to journal throughout therapy, talk with your therapist about these goals so they can better track your progress, and write out the goals you want to achieve at the beginning of therapy so that you can look back on them.
Individualized therapy can be a great tool to utilize throughout treatment for mental health issues. It can give you a safe space to set goals, learn coping skills, identify new things about yourself, and look back to measure your progress during treatment. Delray Center for Healing offers a number of different types of different individual therapy methods that can help to provide people living with mental health issues the tools and support needed to meet goals for mental well-being.