When Healing Looks Like Getting Worse
Why the First Weeks Are the Hardest—and Why That’s Actually Good
I tell every parent the same thing before their son begins the Quest Project: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” They nod. They think they understand. Then Week 3 hits and they call me in a panic. “He was doing okay and now he’s worse than ever. He’s angrier. He’s meaner. He said things to me last night he’s never said before. Is this working? Did we make a mistake?” No. You didn’t make a mistake. What you’re seeing is the healing beginning. And it looks exactly like it’s supposed to look.
Why It Gets Worse
For most of his life, your son has been managing his wound through coping mechanisms. Anger. Withdrawal. Substances. Gaming. Humor. Defiance. Whatever his strategy, it served a purpose: it kept the pain underground where he didn’t have to feel it. When healing begins—whether through therapy, through a program like the Quest Project, or through the kind of intentional parenting this blog has been describing—those coping mechanisms start to crack. The wall he built to keep the pain out starts to come down. And what’s behind that wall comes flooding out.
The anger you’re seeing isn’t new anger. It’s old anger that’s been stored for years, finally finding an exit. The cruelty isn’t his character—it’s his wound, speaking in the only language it knows. The withdrawal isn’t regression—it’s a boy who just encountered something enormous inside himself and needs time to process it. This is the descent. And you cannot heal without it.
The Quest Path
In my clinical framework, healing follows five stages. I call it the Quest Path: Recognition, Release, Reconnection, Reclaiming, and Rising. The “getting worse” phase is the transition from Recognition to Release. He’s recognized the wound—maybe for the first time—and his system is releasing the pain that’s been locked inside. Release is messy. It’s loud. It’s sometimes frightening. But it’s necessary. Think of it like surgery. The incision looks worse than the original injury. But the surgeon isn’t creating damage—she’s accessing what needs to heal. The inflammation after the cut is the body’s healing response, not a complication. Your son’s behavior right now is the emotional equivalent of post-surgical inflammation. It hurts. It looks alarming. But it means the healing has started.
What Parents Should Do During This Phase
Hold the container. Your home needs to be the safe place where his pain can come out without destroying anything. That means maintaining boundaries—he can feel what he feels, but violence, cruelty, and destruction are still off limits—while also not punishing him for having emotions. Don’t take it personally. When he lashes out at you, he’s not attacking you. He’s attacking the nearest safe target, because you’re the person he trusts enough to be ugly around. That’s painful. It’s also, paradoxically, a sign of trust. Don’t ask too many questions. When he comes home from a session—or from any experience that stirs something up—don’t interrogate. “How was it?” is enough. If he wants to talk, he will. If he doesn’t, let the silence be. He’s processing. Stay in contact with whoever is guiding his healing. If he’s in therapy or a program, ask the therapist what to expect. A good clinician will prepare you for the descent and help you distinguish between “getting worse on the way to better” and “genuinely deteriorating.” There’s a difference, and a professional can help you see it. Take care of yourself. This phase is hard on parents too. You need your own support—a therapist, a friend, a partner who understands what you’re walking through. You cannot hold the container for your son if no one is holding one for you.
How Long Does It Last?
In the Quest Project, the descent typically spans Weeks 3 through 5. By Week 6—after the anger work, after the release—the turn begins. The boy starts building back up. The ascending stages—Reconnection, Reclaiming, Rising—bring new behaviors, new maturity, new capacity.
Outside of a structured program, the timeline varies. But the pattern is the same: recognition triggers release, release feels like regression, and the parent who holds steady through the regression gets to witness the rise. My research supports this. In my doctoral study, boys who completed the Quest Project showed statistically significant improvement in interpersonal functioning—a medium effect size of 0.69. But the control group—boys who received no intervention—didn’t just stay the same. They got measurably worse. Without help, wounded boys don’t plateau. They spiral. The discomfort you’re feeling right now is the cost of catching him before the spiral takes hold.
The Other Side
I’ve watched this happen over two thousand times. The angry boy who punched holes in his wall starts using words instead of fists. The withdrawn boy who hadn’t spoken to his mother in months sits down at the dinner table and says, “How was your day?” The defiant boy who fought every rule starts setting boundaries of his own—healthy ones. It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in a straight line. But it happens. Your son isn’t broken. He’s wounded. And right now, the wound is open because someone finally had the courage to look at it. That someone is you. Stay the course. The other side is coming.
Breaking News: The Father Wound Parent Course launches soon on TheQuestProject.com. Twelve video lessons. Twelve practical worksheets. Six weeks of guided healing for your family. If you want to be notified when it’s available, join the email list at thequestproject.com.
Clayton J. Lessor, PhD, LPC, is the author of the upcoming book The Father Wound: Healing the Hidden Injury Behind Your Son’s Struggle and the creator of The Quest Project®, a therapeutic outpatient program that has served over 2,000 adolescent boys since 2000. He served on the steering committee for the White House Council on Men and Boys (2019–2022) and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.