Mental health recovery does not mean you can’t have bad days, and I think a lot of people need to be reminded of that. I’m 3 years into my own mental health recovery journey, and I can tell you that I have had my fair share of bad days. It seems many people are convinced that “recovery” means you don’t have a mental illness anymore, and for some people, that’s the truth. But for most of us, it never goes away. We simply learn how to live with it without allowing it to control our lives. So what does mental health recovery even look like?
For me personally, it means I can allow myself to enjoy the triumphs and successes in my life and the lives of my family members and friends. It means when life becomes stressful, I don’t immediately resort to destructive behaviors, like promiscuity or seeking attention from anyone and everyone who will give it. It means being able to help those close to me navigate tough times themselves, like the loss of a loved one. It means when someone doesn’t text back right away, my mind doesn’t immediately get lost in thoughts of abandonment.
For others, it could mean not self harming, or not picking at their hair. It could mean not reacting in anger, physically or verbally. It could mean showing restraint against whatever urge they have that would be turning on their own recovery journey. It could even mean laying in bed doing nothing for one day instead of three.
When mental illness is in control of our lives, we become used to the chaos. Believe it or not, when we’re in recovery, we sometimes want to allow the chaos back in, because it’s familiar and comfortable despite how painful or difficult it may have been. It takes a lot of work and practice to learn skills that will help us fight off the urge to go back to that chaos. It can be triggered by every day stresses in life, or sudden devastating events. We have to work to find the balance that we never had before.
So to me, mental health recovery is ongoing. We are going to have bad days, just like everyone else. It’s in those bad days where we need support and encouragement the most. We need those little reminders that we’ve come this far, and we can keep going. At one point in our lives, we would’ve done anything to be where we are today in terms of recovery.
Keep on keeping on, friends. ❤
BPD: A Journey 