Mental Health Recovery

What is recovery? There are fantastic courses, you can go on a google sprint to figure it out but if we’re very honest, recovery is different for each person. Just like the diagnoses we receive and the people we are at all.

For me recovery is mainly learning to love myself. Learning to deal with the fact that mental challenges will probably always run through my life, but that doesn’t mean they have control over me. That we are actually a kind of friends, but you kinda get tired with them sometimes because you live with them day in, day out. That they have the music on too noisily.. again, when you actually wanted to rest .. such friends. But you love them anyway.

Because that is also a big part of my recovery. Accept (I know, ugh .. accept .. such a therapy word!), But yes accept that I am who I am, including my mental shizzles. And that if they magically disappeared (which they don’t, they are stubborn housemates), I would no longer be the person I am now. And although I am really done with it some days, I actually quite like myself 90% of the time.

Recovery for me is also learning that I am worth asking for help, and not having to do it alone. And whether that is a text to a friend, “my head is shit, would you please help to make my positive voice bigger?” or calling my therapist (sometimes with a bit of delay, I’m not perfect either). But that I can choose to whom I go for that help. To which family member, friend or therapist.

And the biggest lesson of recovery, which is also one of the most frustrating, is giving myself time. When new things come my way, to be able to take time for them and not think that everything should feel better tomorrow. Just let myself sit in that feeling instead of constantly moving away from it. And also give myself permission to ask for help if it’s just too much to ask for me alone. Sometimes I (still) need a helping hand to stop me, to being able to stand still. To really feel. To really recover, step by step, every time.

#selflove #therapy #recovery #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealth #youarenotalone