Topic Tuesday // What does recovery mean to you? // 17 Oct. 7pm AEDT

Hi @Former-Member and everyone,

How would I personally define recovery? Being free from the restraints and chains of the mental anguish and faulty perception/thinking of MI that holds me back from moving forward with my life and living to my full potential. Learning to talk back to and cope effectively to the best of my ability with the anxiety, grief, negative thoughts, past hurts, losses, low self confidence and mental conditioning (triggers) that keeps me "stuck" in the cycle of depression and anxiety and so forth. Learning to leave the past behind, never looking back but forward to a better future.

I define recovery as not allowing the illness to define who I am or believing it a life sentence ( no chance of healing); for it to no longer control me by giving into its feelings of hopelessness and forebearing, but learning to take control back of my life, choices and happiness. And there is hard lessons learned, strategies, treatment and a positive mindset that leads to this type of recovery. Consistency and hope under adversity is the key to avoid relapses. The confines of our own personal outlook on life, our support network and personal beliefs will determine the possibility for individual recovery.

Mr @Former-Member twin Mr shaz totally agrees with what you said

@Mazarita, mr shaz can relate

@Former-Member , mr shaz and i are talking alot about this tonight , I will be finding it hard to write it all down , but wow

@Mazarita, mr shaz has had inherited depression , Bipolar I believe since he was little and being passed down

Thanks @Former-Member and everyone who's contributed. Can't do recovery goals right now, but it has been really good to hear from others and find some common ground. My immediate goal is sleep and I wish you all well on that one too!

A fundamental goal @Former-Member, I believe is learning to be kind to yourself. Without some self love, healing and acceptance cannot occur.

@Former-Member, the list of things I posted earlier that I do to feel better constitute some of the goals I have for myself every day. I also honestly have difficulty with goals as a concept too. The way I tend to think of it instead is that I hope for better things things and move towards them, rather than set concrete goals. Goals have a way of leaving me feeling like a failure if I do not live up to them, like I lost the 'game'. Self compassion requires me to be gentler in the way I think of and approach things.

Welcome @Former-Member! I love what you have said about not letting your illness define who you are. I think what we have come to some concusions about here tonight is that maybe not letting the word 'recovery' define our journey's in mental health.

These goals are great guys! Being kind and self compassion - beautiful! @Shaz51 its awesome that its opening a big discussion up for you and Mr Shaz too.

@frog no worries - great to achieve your sleep goal tonight! Thank you for your insights

Good point @Mazarita - your list was very positive too and perhaps the 'goal' or theme for you is continuning to focus on your self compassion as it shows a lot of courage and strength to notice that you need that in order to approach the next phases.

I am back from my session with my turtle whisperer. Sigh...

The focus of our session was on the fact that my struggles to both be understood and to understand others, and the consequent frustration and conflict that this so often leads to is very much due to ASD rather than BPD and thus it isn't ever getting better. We talked about how somehow (we didn't get as far as figuring out actually how) we are going to have to come up with a way to manage the frustration. But the actual not-being-able-to-communicate thing isn't ever ever ever getting better.

I think this is in part why I struggle with the concept of recovery - because for me at least, some of my muddle is never going to get better.

Reading over the thread, I found it interesting seeing how many people don't like the term recovery. It almost seems like the "experts" have come up with the idea of talking about recovery thinking that it would engender hope in those with mental health issues, when in fact it can do the opposite.

I never use the term "recovery" myself. To me it makes much more sense to talk about "living well with..."

Out of that list of words you gave @Former-Member, I would choose "functional." For me, being functional would mean being financially independent and not reliant on welfare. That's why I spent 12 years at uni with the goal of having a career. Thus far that isn't panning out so well.