What is Recovery

I’ve gotten the question more times than I can count, ‘what does recovery mean to me?’ And it is important to emphasize that recovery does mean different things to different people. Just as no mental health challenge is ever the same, no two recoveries are the same.

Nor is recovery exactly the same as recovery from a physical ailment. If I break my leg, I will be on crutches for a while, and then there will be a point where the medical community says I have recovered and can go back to using my leg. There is a clear time when the injury occurred and a time when I am recovered.

However, recovery in the mental health context is typically an ongoing process. You often hear those recovering from substance abuse or alcoholism refer to themselves as still recovering many years later. Recovery in that sense is not about not having the desire to use a given substance, but about implementing wellness strategies that keep you from using the substance.

Similarly, recovering from something like depression or anxiety isn’t necessarily about getting to the point where you don’t need medication anymore or you don’t need a therapist anymore. Often you might feel as though you are in a good place and still using both of those tools.

So what does recovery mean to me? Recovery means having wellness tools that I can use to maintain my mental well-being. It means having the awareness to recognize when I am struggling. It means having a plan and a support system that I can turn to when those struggles come. It does not necessarily mean being done with therapy or medication.

Nor does it mean my recovery has failed if I have a bad day, if I have a day I can’t get out of bed. Recovery for me is about the journey. It is about not only having less bad days, but also about having the resiliency to handle bad days when they do arise.

But what about you? What does recovery mean to you? Feel free to reach out to us through our social media channels or by email at info@thelegalmindsociety.org.