One of the most important parts of receiving care for mental health conditions is therapy. Therapy sessions allow you to delve into the problems you face and work toward making productive changes to your thought processes and behaviors so that you can live a healthier life. The challenge, however, is maintaining progress between therapy sessions.

Once you leave a session, you may be unsure of how to manage your everyday life, especially if you’ve just begun to receive treatment. To avoid falling back into old habits, try these ten key tips for maintaining your progress between one session and another.

1. Do Your Homework

Your therapist will likely give you assignments to complete between sessions. These assignments can help you continue integrating the ideas you worked on during your latest session. This homework will usually involve putting these strategies into practice.

For example, if you struggle with anxiety, your therapist may give you mindfulness exercises to keep you in the moment or deep breathing exercises to help you relax. You may also need to practice reframing negative beliefs or work on other coping strategies.

At first, it may seem overwhelming to have to tackle these assignments without your therapist’s support and guidance, but by practicing on your own, you can start building self-confidence.

This process empowers you and goes further than just helping you with maintaining progress between therapy sessions. You learn how to trust yourself more in general, which can boost your self-esteem and compel you to stay focused on your healing process.

To get the most out of the time between sessions, make sure that you’re not practicing your assignments by rote. Stay fully engaged so that you can continue making strides.

2. Keep a Journal

Keeping a journal where you can jot down your thoughts and feelings between therapy sessions can also help you stay focused on your therapy. Journaling gives you a chance to pick up on thought patterns and the behaviors they lead to. You can keep an eye on your moods and notice what prompts you to experience difficulties in your mental health.

Journaling can be particularly helpful for coping with depression, managing stress, and dealing with anxiety, but it can also be useful for people facing substance use disorders. You can practice positive self-talk through journaling, too.

Many people benefit most from journaling every day, but it’s important to do what’s most effective for you. If you feel stressed over the thought of having to journal every day, try every other day, for instance.

3. Assess Your Previous Therapy Session

Maintaining progress between your therapy sessions can also mean picking apart your last session and assessing it. A single session can pack a significant amount of information that might be overwhelming all at once, so thinking about it after it’s over can make it easier to absorb what you learned.

Keeping a journal can help in this area, too, since you can write down everything that you remember and analyze what your therapist said. For example, did you experience any revelations during the session that you need to keep in mind as you move forward? Are there actionable things you can do to maintain your progress?

As you assess the session, more questions may start popping up. Write them down so that you can address them during your next session. Getting into the habit of unpacking each question like this can make a significant difference in your involvement in the process.

4. Consider Your Next Session

Often, people have many things that they want to talk about during their next sessions, and when they walk into the room and sit in front of their therapist, they forget everything they wanted to say. Aside from being frustrating, not being able to efficiently use your therapy time can also slow down your progress.

Alternatively, perhaps you experience the opposite: you have so many things to talk about that you’re not sure where to begin and can struggle to prioritize the most important topics. This, too, can slow your therapy’s progress.

By writing down what you want to discuss beforehand, you can pick out the most important topics session by session. Organizing your thoughts in this manner can make it easier to cover the most important things in each session so that you’re not left with gaps or uncertainties.

5. Create a Coping Skills Box

Another important strategy for maintaining progress between therapy sessions is to create a coping skills box. In this box, you can have flashcards with the various coping strategies you’ve talked about with your therapist. Write down relaxation exercises, mantras, affirmative messages, and anything else that steadies you when you’re struggling.

You can add other items as well, like aromatherapy oils, or distractions, like puzzles or crafts, to help ground yourself and better manage anxiety. In this box, you should also have contact information for people you can call in case of an emergency. This can be very helpful for people recovering from substance use disorders who may face triggers.

The coping skills box offers a significant benefit in that it teaches you how to self-soothe. Instead of reaching for a glass of wine or engaging in other harmful behaviors, you can regulate your own emotions with tools you keep on hand.

6. Give Yourself Things to Look Forward To

As you’re battling mental health issues, the gaps between therapy sessions can seem impossible to go through. You may be unsure of how to face your daily life and fear falling into bad habits. One of the ways that you can help yourself meet each day is to give yourself things to look forward to.

Do you enjoy going to a particular cafe? Plan on doing so the day before your therapy session. Add a movie night to your routine, even if it’s just a night at home with microwave popcorn. Finding small things to look forward to throughout the week can help you address feelings of hopelessness.

7. Get Enough Sleep

Your mental health won’t improve if you don’t get enough rest. Your body and mind need a certain number of hours per day to heal and function at their best. Sleep allows you to consolidate memories, process information, and maintain cognitive skills. It also helps you make decisions.

Not getting enough sleep can make it incredibly difficult to cope even with minor stressors and could impact how accurately you see the world around you. Sleep deficiency has been linked with depression, anxiety, and other mood disturbances.

To be able to have the positive therapy sessions you need to manage the issues you’re facing, allow yourself rest. Instead of using your phone to scroll through social media for a half hour before bed, for example, try to get an extra half hour of sleep.

8. Focus on Healthy Habits

To be able to get the most out of your therapy sessions, take the time between sessions to set aside unhealthy habits and incorporate healthy ones. You can add some exercise to your daily routine, for instance. You don’t have to join a gym or do anything elaborate — a walk can be enough.

Keeping yourself active can boost feel-good chemicals in the brain and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can also go a long way toward helping you in between therapy sessions.

You may also want to make other healthy decisions as well, like no longer smoking or avoiding alcohol. Alcohol can impact your mood and worsen depressive symptoms because it affects critical neurotransmitters like dopamine. Although it may at first seem to improve your mood, alcohol can eventually make depressive symptoms more prominent.

As you wait for your next therapy session, consider improving your diet. Most people don’t realize just how much of an impact what they eat has on their mental health. Following a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and seafood can reduce the risk of developing depression. Limit the processed products you eat and go for healthier fats.

9. Speak About Your Session

Another excellent option is to talk about your session with someone else. This is a bit like journaling because you’ll be picking apart what you learned and expressing how the session made you feel.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t consider this other person another therapist. Don’t ask them for advice — instead, talk through what you’re learning.

Speaking to someone can help you remain accountable as well. By letting them know about any exercises you have to do, for example, they may be able to remind you to do your deep breathing exercises if you encounter a surge of anxiety.

The right person for this will typically be someone who is good at setting boundaries. You want to know that help is available, but you want to equip yourself to self-soothe as well.

10. Connect With Others Facing Similar Challenges

Isolation can be a serious issue for people dealing with mental health conditions or even just struggling through a difficult time in their lives. You may be tempted to avoid others for fear of bothering them or because you don’t feel up to being social. Doing so can be hugely detrimental to your mental health and your therapy progress, though.

If you don’t feel comfortable speaking with loved ones about what you’re going through, there are support groups both online and in person that you can choose. Support groups give you a chance to speak about what you’re struggling with among people who are going through similar challenges.

You also get to hear from others who are struggling, which can give you some perspective and even show you what progress can look like. Above all, you can avoid the detrimental effects of isolation, including worsening stress levels, that can more easily lead to anxiety and depression.

As you wait for your next therapy session, joining a support group of some kind can be a vital tool. If you’re not sure where to find a group, ask your therapist for recommendations.

Maintaining Therapy Progress With Plus by APN

Beginning therapy is one of the best things you can do for yourself if you’re facing mental health concerns, including substance use disorders. Maintaining progress between therapy sessions can be difficult, however, so having a clear idea of the strategies you can rely on to get through those days is essential.

By focusing on doing the homework your therapist gives you and prioritizing self-care like eating better and getting enough sleep, you can keep taking steps forward in your recovery.

At Plus by APN, we offer mental health services that include behavioral health assessments as well as treatment options like neurofeedback therapy and ketamine-assisted therapy. Our team of experts can help you begin your healing journey and guide you through each of the recovery stages.

Call us at 424.644.6486 to learn more about our wide range of services today.

References

  • “Journaling for Mental Health – Health Encyclopedia – University of Rochester Medical Center.” Www.urmc.rochester.edu, www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=1&contentid=4552.
  • Mahindru, Aditya et al. “Role of Physical Activity on Mental Health and Well-Being: A Review.” Cureus vol. 15,1 e33475. 7 Jan. 2023, doi:10.7759/cureus.33475
  • National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. “Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency – How Sleep Affects Your Health | NHLBI, NIH.” Www.nhlbi.nih.gov, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 15 June 2022, www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/sleep-deprivation/health-effects.
  • Novotney, Amy. “The Risks of Social Isolation.” American Psychological Association, May 2019, www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation.
  • Nunes, Edward V. “Alcohol and the Etiology of Depression.” American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 180, no. 3, 1 Mar. 2023, pp. 179–181, https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230004.
  • Selhub, Eva. “Nutritional Psychiatry: Your Brain on Food .” Harvard Health Blog, Harvard Health Publishing, 18 Sept. 2022, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-your-brain-on-food-201511168626.