Progress Is Being Able to Think, Not Always Having the Answer

One of the things I often talk about in therapy is the difference between what I call the primitive brain and the intellectual brain. I use those terms because they make something quite complicated much easier to understand. The primitive brain is the part of us that reacts. It is fast, protective and emotional. It is looking for danger, trying to keep us safe and making very quick judgements about what is happening. If something frightens us, angers us, embarrasses us or makes us feel threatened, that response can happen before we have really had a chance to think about it. The heart rate changes, the body reacts and suddenly we can be completely caught up in what we are feeling. I sometimes describe the intellectual brain as being only a fraction of a second behind — around 0.02 seconds is a useful way of illustrating just how quickly more reflective processing can begin to become available. I would not treat that as a literal stopwatch measurement of the brain, because neuroscience is much more complicated than that. The important point is that the rational part of us is not hours behind the emotional response. The ability to think differently can become available very quickly. What takes longer is actually being able to use it.

That distinction is really important. Having access to rational thought does not mean that twenty milliseconds after becoming angry, frightened or overwhelmed we suddenly produce the perfect logical response. Clearly we do not. If somebody has hurt us, if we have received bad news, if we are worried about something important or if we are caught in an anxious pattern, it can take time before we are able to see the situation properly. Sometimes that might be a few minutes. Sometimes it might be several hours. Sometimes it can take days. The intellectual brain being available is not the same as instantly knowing what to do. What matters is whether we can gradually get ourselves into the state where we are capable of considering possibilities, weighing things up and seeing something from more than one angle. When we are deep in the primitive response, there is usually only one version of events. Something is terrible. Somebody is completely wrong. The situation is hopeless. We must act immediately. We need an answer now. The intellectual brain gives us space around that reaction.

I think this is one of the most important things to understand when somebody is looking for progress in therapy. People quite understandably want resolutions. They want to know whether they should leave the relationship, take the job, confront somebody, forgive somebody, stop worrying about something or make a particular decision. They can sometimes judge whether therapy is working according to whether those questions have been answered. I see it differently. For me, a major part of progress is not necessarily having reached the final answer. It is being able to think about the question from the intellectual brain rather than being completely driven by the primitive one. You may still not know what you want to do. You may still be uncomfortable. You may still have uncertainty. But if you are able to sit with it, consider it properly and avoid being pulled immediately into panic, anger or catastrophic thinking, then something important has already changed.

The primitive brain wants certainty very quickly. That makes sense if we think about what it is there to do. If there really is a threat, spending half an hour debating all the possible options is not particularly useful. A quick response is valuable. The difficulty is that the same system can become involved in situations where there is no immediate physical danger. An unanswered message can become a threat. A difficult conversation can become a threat. Somebody's facial expression can become a threat. Not knowing what will happen next can become a threat. Once the primitive brain gets involved, it often wants to close the situation down as quickly as possible. We want reassurance, we want certainty and we want somebody to tell us what the answer is. The intellectual brain is much more capable of saying, "I don't know yet. I need to think about this." That can actually be a sign of progress rather than indecision.

This is why I think being in the intellectual brain is more important than immediately reaching the resolution somebody believes they need. If somebody comes into a session saying, "I still haven't decided what I am going to do," they may assume that nothing has changed. I might hear something very different. If the week before they were panicking, unable to sleep, imagining every possible disaster and feeling that they had to make a decision immediately, but this week they can say, "I still don't know, but I am thinking about it and I am not as frightened," I would see that as significant progress. The problem may not have disappeared, but the brain dealing with the problem has changed. That matters enormously because the quality of the eventual decision is likely to be very different when it comes from a calmer and more reflective state.

I also think it is important to trust that the intellectual brain will continue working on something even when we do not force it. People sometimes feel that they have to think harder in order to find an answer. They go over the same question again and again, usually late at night, believing that if they analyse it for another hour they will finally solve it. Quite often that does the opposite. The more stressed we become, the more we move back into primitive thinking, and the narrower our view becomes. Sometimes the most productive thing we can do is create some space. Sleep on it. Go for a walk. Do something ordinary. Allow the emotional intensity to reduce. When the intellectual brain has room to work, different possibilities can start appearing. It will usually produce an answer eventually, but that answer may not come according to the timetable the primitive brain is demanding.

I often find that people recognise this when they look back at previous situations in their lives. Something that felt completely overwhelming at the time can look remarkably different a few days later. The facts may not have changed at all. What has changed is the state from which they are viewing them. When we are calmer, we have greater access to memory, perspective, problem solving and the ability to imagine more than one possible outcome. We are more capable of asking useful questions rather than simply reacting to frightening ones. "What if everything goes wrong?" becomes, "What can I actually control here?" "Why has this happened to me?" might become, "What do I want to do next?" That shift is often where useful answers begin to emerge.

This is also why I am cautious about defining successful therapy purely by outcomes. Of course outcomes matter. If somebody came because they wanted to feel less anxious, sleep better or cope with a particular situation, we want to see change. But there is another type of progress that is sometimes less obvious and, in my view, just as important. It is the ability to return to the intellectual brain more easily. Somebody may still experience an emotional reaction, because we are never trying to turn the primitive brain off. We need it. The change is that they do not remain trapped there for as long. They may notice the reaction earlier. They may recognise, "This is my anxiety talking." They may give themselves time before responding. They may decide not to send the message while angry. They may wake the next morning and see the situation differently. That is progress.

For me, the aim is not to create somebody who never reacts emotionally. That would neither be realistic nor particularly healthy. The aim is to help somebody become better at moving from reaction into reflection. The primitive brain may always get the first word, but it does not have to have the final one. The intellectual brain gives us the ability to slow things down, look at the evidence, consider different possibilities and eventually make decisions that are more in keeping with who we actually are rather than how frightened, angry or overwhelmed we felt in one particular moment.

That is why, in therapy, I am often less interested in whether somebody has "solved" the problem this week and more interested in how they are thinking about it. Are they calmer? Can they tolerate not knowing for a little while? Can they see more than one possibility? Are they responding rather than reacting? If the answer to those questions is increasingly yes, then progress is happening. The resolution often comes afterwards. And when it does, it tends to be a much better one because it has been reached by the part of the brain that was actually able to think.