Traumatic Experiences Community Daily Check-in: Wednesday, 15th, May 2019
Hi all! I hope everyone is having a lovely morning, day, or evening!
During recovery sometimes it's so easy to get bogged down and feel like things aren't getting better fast enough. It's so easy to think things like "other people can do this" and "why are things just as hard, shouldn't they be getting easier?" and I find that often thoughts like these come up because I ignore two crucial factors about recovery.
1. Change isn't noticable from day to day.
Wanting to improve and be better every single day is a wonderful goal, but it means you don't really give yourself a moment to breathe. And every day that you coast or perhaps take a step back feels like a failure. And then you risk spiraling again because you're focusing so hard on the negatives. The trick I've found is to always try to compare myself against me this time last year. 3 years ago. 5 years ago. Let yourself think about how far you've come for a moment. Did you finally seek help? Or have you got yourself on track with a plan and you're steadily working through it? Let yourself see how you've grown as a person during recovery.
2. New life events happen every day. Dealing with those things is not a step backwards.
This is one that I still get stuck on. During recovery it's so easy to put ourselves down for not handling "normal" things or not being able to continue with our overarching plan because we're focusing on "little things." Sometimes we put too much energy into recovery and normal every day stuff suffers. Sometimes a new stressful life event happens, such as a pet getting sick, family popping up unexpectedly, or a holiday comes around, and you have to shelf recovery for a bit to focus on those things.
Recovery comes down to doing what you need to do to survive each day and focusing as best as you can on the long term picture. All of you are doing better than you know and I'm willing to bet, better than you will ever admit to yourselves, so I'll do it for you. You're all strong and courageous and amazing.
Do you feel like you get caught in some of these recovery pitfalls?
How is your progress going compared against last year as opposed to yesterday?
As always, feel free to ignore these questions and tell me how you're feeling today. Much love <3
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I just want to say thank you for this. It came at the right moment <3
@admaiorasemper
I'm glad it helped in some way <3
Also, nice to meet you!
@Hoxenos
I have alot in my mind today but what you shared made me so happy. As human trying so hard to make their life better, it's difficult to have a day without any "progress". I dislike waiting and having to make days end day after day. My recovery was one of the hardest thing I had to do in life so far. I wish I knew before or wish someone told me this before; that making changes doesn't have to be dramatic everyday. Sometimes you don't even notice it..
Anyone who's struggling to make big life changes either by quitting addiction or picking up better habit, should be kind to themselves. It takes time and somedays it's okay to not have signigicant progress that our eyes see.
@Jackie
Well said, Jackie. Honestly some days, simply surviving whatever trials that day brought in a way is still progress. In some ways it's desensitization training, right? Like the more neutral responses you have to something instead of negative ones, the better! Like if I'm doing something that used to make me anxious and now only makes me uncomfortable (ex: grocery store) then that's still progress everyday because it's almost like... upkeep of recovery. Instead of something active.
