Let's start with the truth: The week you fell back into your old patterns, the week you thought you erased all your progress, was not a failure. It was the most important and productive therapeutic work you did all month.

Last week, you were a rock star. You set that boundary with your mom, you didn't immediately apologize for it, and you felt a surge of power and pride. You thought, "This is it. I'm finally getting it."

This week, a similar situation came up, and you fell right back into the old people-pleasing script. Now you are drowning in shame. It feels like all your progress was an illusion. You're not just back at square one; you feel like you're in a deeper hole than when you started, and the hopelessness is overwhelming.

The self-help industry, with its obsession with "30-day challenges" and "upward-and-to-the-right" graphs, has sold us a violent lie. It is the lie of linear progress. This model, which was built for machines and spreadsheets, is not just unrealistic when applied to a human nervous system; it is a recipe for perpetual shame.

You're Walking a Spiral Staircase

You believe you are stuck in a chaotic, repeating loop of failure. You are not. You are walking a spiral staircase.

When you are on a spiral staircase, you are constantly circling back to the same point on the compass — the same old wound, the same difficult relationship, the same core fear. From your limited, ground-level perspective, it feels exactly like you're going in circles. It feels like you're right back where you started.

But if you could zoom out, you would see that with every single loop, you are a level higher. You are not repeating the past; you are re-seeing it from a new, higher, and wiser vantage point.

The Shape of Healing

THE MYTH (A Straight Line):

  • A linear path from "broken" to "fixed." Every step back is a failure.

THE REALITY (A Spiral Staircase):

  • A path that circles back on old themes, but always from a higher level of awareness. Every loop is progress.

Why "Circling Back" Is the Mechanism — Not a Bug

This isn't just a nice metaphor. It is a precise description of how your brain actually heals.

Research confirms: recalling a memory makes it temporarily fragile and "labile" again. It must be re-stabilized through "reconsolidation." This provides a window to update the memory. When you "circle back" to the old people-pleasing pattern, your brain is reactivating that old memory — making it fragile, opening the reconsolidation window. That window is where the real work happens.

And the mechanism is specific: prediction error triggers memory updating and reconsolidation. When you experience the old pattern but with new information (the safety and skills you've been building in therapy), that mismatch — that prediction error — is the signal that tells your brain to update the old file.

And the update is permanent: memory reconsolidation allows for the permanent updating or disruption of maladaptive memories, unlike extinction-based methods which leave the original memory intact. Extinction (white-knuckling your way through it) leaves the old pattern intact. Reconsolidation (the spiral) actually rewrites it.

This is why last week, when you set that boundary, you felt different. Not just behaviorally. Viscerally. Neurologically. Your brain was reconsolidating — permanently updating the old "people-pleasing keeps you safe" file with new data: "I set a boundary and survived."

How to Measure Real Progress

The next time you find yourself circling back to an old pattern, get curious instead of ashamed. Ask yourself:

  • What did I notice this time that I couldn't see on the last loop?
  • How quickly did I catch myself? (Speed of awareness is a legitimate measure of progress — you used to catch yourself days later. Now it's hours. Then minutes.)
  • Did I feel something different in my body? Even a flicker of discomfort with the old pattern is new data. That discomfort is the prediction error. That error is the engine of change.

"A 'bad week' is not a failure. It is a new view of an old problem from a higher floor. And that is the very definition of progress."

Stop judging your journey by the metric of a straight line. Embrace the spiral. Read about memory reconsolidation, explore our approach to therapy, or when you're ready to honor the true shape of your journey: We're here to help you climb →

Part of: Our Philosophy → | Related: The "Aha! Moment" · Memory Reconsolidation