The Journey Towards Recovery

Those of us who battle with mental illnesses know that recovery is one of the hardest yet most crucial part of the battle. We are often fooled into thinking that once you start your journey through recovery, it will be just a couple months of continuous progress and then you will be able to live your life like nothing had ever happened. Well, that is pretty much the complete opposite of what recovery really is. So what is recovery…and what should we expect?

As someone who has been in recovery for about 3 years, I still don’t know if I can completely answer that question. All I have is my own definition and experience but it is a pretty good place to start.

The path to recovery starts with accepting your illness. To me, this is the most important part of recovery- you need to mentally accept where you are and understand it completely. Recovery is about 90% mental and you need to have a strong mental mindset before you start your journey. Accepting that you have an illness and educating yourself on all the causes and triggers is a key part in making your recovery a success. Accepting your illness also means not blaming yourself. It means recognizing that mental illnesses are not something you have complete control over and that there are a lot of factors that contribute to it. Accept that you have a struggle that you must fight and accept that you can’t ignore it. Recovery itself is the journey to become whole again. After accepting where you are in life, the next step is to become stronger and become whole. Recovery is fighting your illness and not succumbing to the unhealthy temptations. Recovery is changing your habits, your mindset, your lifestyle to a healthier version. Recovery is necessary because it is what will save your life. Without recovery, we just stay in our unhealthy limbo where we lose ourselves little by little. The most important thing to know about recovery is that it is not a straightforward path. In recovery, you will have ups and downs. You may have a week where you make progress and two weeks where you slip back. The thing you should realize is that it is normal. It is normal to be upset, to cry, to fail every once in a while. The most important part of this stage in recovery is never giving up. Recovery is not something that will be done in a fixed amount of time- for many of us, recovery is something we go through for the rest of our life. However, over time it does get better. You just need to stick with it.

Recovery is a journey. You will discover more about yourself than you ever would have dreamed and you will become stronger than anybody would have ever guessed. Recovery is the journey that will save your life, and those journeys do not come easy. You need to work for it, you need to cry for it and bleed for it. However, it all pays off in the end because you will become yourself again. You will not be a slave to a disorder or illness, you will be yours again.