The term “recovery” doesn’t encapsulate how hard it really is. Recovery is a place of knowing where you’re supposed to be but not knowing quite how to get there. It can be discouraging, some days you actually feel like you’re regressing… but it’s possible, it just takes time. You don’t recover from a mental illness the same way you do as breaking your leg for instance; recovering from a mental illness takes time, and usually the road is bumpy and you find yourself falling backward when you thought you were ahead. Through the process, you may be asking yourself if you’ll ever truly recover. The answer is yes, but it just takes a lot of work. The process of recovery is so exhausting, but the feeling of achieving wellness after your hard work is so liberating. But recovery IS possible, even after chronic mental illness is all that you’ve known.
The first step in recovering is accepting the fact that you have a mental illness and knowing that it needs to be changed. We cannot be “cured” of mental illness, but we can heal. When we heal from a mental illness, evidence of its existence will still be there. Recovery is a process where it’s up to you to find stability and wellness and learn to develop healthier coping mechanisms. Naturally, our bodies and minds are going to find ways to cope with things, but it’s up to you to monitor the way that you cope with things and to make sure that you’re making healthy decisions. I personally started with medication; it allowed me to keep my chemicals in balance while I found ways to deal with what I was going through. It’s okay to take medication, it acts as a really great support system when you need it.
It’s also important to remember that setbacks WILL happen; I’ve been trying to recover from my ED for about a year now, and still find myself going back and forth… and that’s okay! However, I got my NEDA tattoo (pictured below) this summer as a reminder to keep my head up through this lifelong process.
Once you start to build healthier coping mechanisms, you’ll find out so much about yourself that you didn’t know before. You’ll learn how to better deal with things, you’ll learn your triggers and how to better prevent them, and you’ll find yourself feeling like a whole new person. Once you’re in remission, you’ll know; the symptoms of your mental illness will be mostly if not completely absent. But also that sometimes your unhealthy habits may present themselves, and that’s okay. Plan for relapse, because relapse is part of the process. But also know that you’re working toward a better you, so don’t be so hard on yourself. You can do this, honey!
Here’s to living and flourishing!