Jessica Thomas

About

What this work has shown me most clearly is that people rebuild in a particular order, and the order is almost never the one they expected. Sleep tends to improve first, then concentration, then the willingness to go places, and the feelings usually arrive last of all. Knowing the sequence helps enormously. Survivors often conclude that nothing is working because the thing they wanted to change first has not shifted yet. In fact three earlier stages have often already completed without being noticed at all. We track the whole sequence together. That way the progress becomes visible rather than invisible. University and school counseling was my first setting, where I learned to explain a process clearly to people who were understandably skeptical about it. Explanation is half the work. If you think nothing is working, it may simply be working in an unfamiliar order. Order explains most of the apparent lack of progress.