Mental Illness Recovery: The Untold Story

Hello there! How have you been?

Isn’t it amazing how fast the last two years flew by or is it just me? Happy New Year by the way! I hope this year we find the courage to leave behind pain and sorrow and find new reasons to believe in good again.

Life update: I completed one month working as a content developer trainee at my new internship. It has been a pretty decent experience so far. I started sessions with a new therapist, which is also going well. Life is good, if not the best. But now I know that it’s okay to not feel up to it all the time. And let me tell you this - recovery is not a one-way journey.

What is Recovery?

Recovery can mean different things to different people. However, the one thing it’s not is that it’s not synonymous to being “cured”. If I have to define recovery, I might say it’s a process of saving oneself from hopelessness, pain, sorrow, fear, numbness, and finding at least one good reason to keep doing what we love. The first time you enter recovery, you might expect your symptoms to disappear magically, but that’s not how it works. If it were that simple, do you really think millions of people out there would be talking about their mental health struggles?

My Recovery story - so far

When my anxiety attacks and outbursts first started fading away, I was super excited. Is there anything more amazing than having your appetite back, being able to sleep, not having breakdowns every single day, and being able to suppress your outbursts? Life felt normal for once in a long time.

And then I had a breakdown. It had been months since I had one, I had almost forgotten how painful they were, mentally and physically. The more painful it got, the harder it became for me to talk about it. I felt like a failure. How could I even fail at getting better - not for anyone else, but myself?

What I realized later is that it wasn’t a failure at all, it was just a part of the process. As long as you choose to not give up (and that is entirely up to you), you’ll keep progressing no matter how many setbacks you face. These hurdles are bound to be overwhelming, but they are also essential to keep you on the right path, to not let your goal get dwindled. It is much like a “necessary evil” that pushes you down only so you remember how to pull yourself back up!

What my Recovery Journey taught me

There are a few things that I have learnt and am still learning on my way to recovery.

Where there is hope, there is way

Without hope, we would barely be alive, let alone recover. If hope dims, look for it in the little things. It doesn’t always have to be internal strength that keeps you going, the world outside can have a lot to offer that you might not be aware of yet. Take a peek and you might just find something or someone to keep your hope alive.

Take the decision to start

As I said, recovery is a process and the decision to get better is solely and uniquely yours. The sooner you start the fight, the better. After all, how can we heal today if we choose to be the same person we were yesterday? There might be a million thoughts holding you back, but you need only one to take your leap of faith.

Find your own therapy

Talking therapy is not the only kind of therapy and it’s definitely not the only path you can take in pursuing recovery. You know what works for you and what doesn’t. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. It is no one else’s battle. As long as you are firm on your decision to turn tides in your favor, not a single person has the right to tell you that you are doing it wrong.

I know it’s not easy, but then, don't the most difficult roads take us the most wondrous of places?

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