What CANNOT be "fixed" during therapy – and why it's normal in the healing process

Why Therapy Doesn’t Fix Everything Immediately

Starting therapy often brings enormous hope — for the person struggling with addiction and for their loved ones. There is a quiet (and sometimes very loud) expectation:

“If they’re in therapy now, everything should start getting better.”

Yet the reality of recovery is often very different. Not because therapy doesn’t work — but because addiction leaves marks that cannot be erased overnight.
 

Therapy Is the Beginning of a Process, Not a Magical Repair

Residential treatment is not a “reset button.” It does not erase the past, undo losses, or make difficult emotions disappear within a few weeks.

What therapy does is:

• interrupt destructive patterns,

• teach new coping strategies,

• create a safe space to confront painful experiences.

But many things simply take time — and that is completely normal.

 

What Cannot Be Repaired Immediately?
 

1. Emotions Suppressed for Years

Anxiety, shame, anger, guilt, and emptiness often surface only after substances are removed.

This is not regression.It is a sign that the body and mind are beginning to feel again.
 

2. Relationships That Have Been Hurt

Trust does not automatically return just because someone is in therapy.

Loved ones have the right to:

• caution,

• emotional distance,

• their own feelings.

Therapy does not repair relationships on someone else’s behalf. It teaches how to rebuild them step by step.
 

3. Self-Worth

Many people struggling with addiction have lived for years with beliefs such as:

“I am not good enough.”“I ruin everything.”“I can’t do anything right.”

These beliefs cannot be undone in a single insight.Self-worth is built through lived experience — not through one realization.
 

4. The Consequences of Past Decisions

Debt, career problems, legal issues, broken connections — therapy does not erase the consequences of addiction.

But it offers something far more important:

Tools to face them with sobriety and responsibility.
 

5. Fear of the Future

Questions such as:

“Can I handle this?”“Who am I without substances?”“What will my life look like?”

These are natural parts of recovery — not signs of weakness.

 

Why the Lack of “Spectacular Improvement” Is Not Failure

The most important changes are often invisible from the outside:

• someone begins telling the truth,

• learns to take responsibility,

• stops running away,

• starts understanding their own mechanisms.

These are the foundations of recovery — even if they seem quiet and unspectacular.
 

What Does Long-Term Recovery Look Like?

Recovery means:

• small steps,

• relapses in thinking (not always in using),

• moments of doubt,

• gradually building a new life.

At Monar in Kębliny near Łódź, therapy is understood in exactly this way — as a process that requires time, support, and realistic expectations.
 

What Helps Most at This Stage?

• patience (with yourself and others),

• accepting that “difficult” does not mean “wrong,”

• group support,

• a structured daily routine,

• working on everyday life — not only on the problem.
   

Therapy Is the Beginning of the Journey

If someone is in therapy and still:

• struggles with emotions,

• does not know what comes next,

• does not look “fixed,”

it is very possible that… the process is working.

The Monar treatment center in Kębliny near Łódź does not promise miracles —

but it provides real support in building a sober and meaningful life.