What even IS recovery?

By Jay Piza

If you’ve lived with mental illness for a while (like I have!), you may share my frustration with the idea of ‘recovery’.

Recovery is what we’re supposed to be working towards (and HOW you work towards recovery is a whole other topic, but let’s not get sidetracked). It’s the goal. The end state. The place we want to be.

Only…

What the hell does ‘recovery’ mean???

In one way it seems simple. Like if you have a cold: at some point, you’re going to be sneezing and coughing and feeling bloody awful. Then you will ‘recover’ and eventually you won’t be sneezing and coughing and feeling bloody awful.

It can be less straightforward when we’re talking mental health, though. Which is not to say there’s no hope, of course! Life can be full of joy and achievement and connection, even if you live with, or lived with, a serious mental illness.

But there’s a big difference in how obvious ‘recovery’ is when it’s ‘lack of coughing all the time’ versus ‘anxiety is managable or minimal’, or ‘capable of getting through the day with enough energy and drive and ability to feel emotions’ or ‘not jumping out of my skin because my neighbour down the street slammed a door.’

So what even IS recovery, and how are we supposed to know that we’re there?

Here’s the thing:

Recovery isn’t a place.

It’s a process.

As Dr Gabor Maté writes: “Recovery is not a goal to be achieved, but a direction to be followed.”

Recovery is the point where you have been doing The Work,
and it is noticeably doing its work on you.

When I write and talk about The Work, I’m not using it in terms of the Alcoholics Anonymous process or any particular spiritual or proscribed approach to mental health.

I mean the little daily practices and habits I've built, based on the evidence of what contributes to recovery and wellbeing.

They all seem like they should have little or nothing to do with, or contribute to, recovering from a serious mental illness like PTSD, especially given how incredibly unwell I was in mid-2023.

But!

The process, the how of 'recovering', is The Work.

It's eating around three meals a day of real food (not leftover pizza from a week ago for breakfast, not a single cup of tea and nothing else all day, not an entire bucket of chicken in one go – nothing nutritious is ever served in a bucket).

It's moving your body every day, even if it's just to get up and stretch for two minutes.

It's connecting with other humans and sharing even a little of your life with them, from a place of authenticity.

It's sleeping, in a bed if there's one available, at night, for somewhere between five and eight hours. Ideally. That's a real life peak goal for some of us, I know that well.

The Work is all of that. The stuff that feels pointless when you're in the pit, the fog, the fury — when effort itself feels hostile.

That's what recovery is, though!

Doing the work is like walking on the path that will keep you safe and moving in a positive direction. It's not a magical destination you get to at the end, and then you spend the rest of forever being carried around on the back of a unicorn without ever having to take another step. It’s getting there, not being there, by doing The Work.

Here’s the thing:

The Work SUCKS.

It takes so long, and so many little decisions to make those bits of effort, especially at the beginning, and it doesn't pay off straight away in any big way. Particularly if you're an addict, impatience is going to be a problem, and if you have a condition that makes any kind of effort so HEAVY, and so HARD, then it can seem too high a mountain to climb.

Thing is, though, this is what recovery is. One baby step in front of another, not seeing anything but the ground beneath your feet, feeling like you're going nowhere some of the time (although there will be some amazing views along the way, too).

It’s like learning to play guitar, or speak a new language, or getting seriously buff. A single session of practice isn’t going to mean you can now play your favourite jam. A few Duolingo lessons won’t mean you have gone from new to being able to debate pineapple on pizza like a native (wrong and gross, btw). Even the best workout with the most reps you’ve ever done won’t take you from floppy to totes swole (as I believe the youths might say).

Thing is, one day - and seemingly all of a sudden, you notice that things have changed.

You have changed.

Those baby steps have gotten bigger. The weight has gotten lighter. The fog is lifting and you can see some road ahead that you thought was nothing but a cliff over a pit of doom.

THAT is recovery. It's the moment you look up, and see how far you've come, and realise you CAN keep going - and do more than you thought was possible back at the bottom. You didn’t even notice it happening, just like you don’t notice one rep getting easier to lift or one chord being able to nail.

Sure, a unicorn ride would be nice. Or one of those moving floor thingies they have at airports to get you to your destination faster. Or a super-fast elevator to the top of Everest, maybe with a cool beverage and your favourite band playing live (it's a big elevator, and it's imaginary, so your favourite band is totally playing live for you).

But that’s not recovery – the bit you would skip over IS recovery.

And the things you learn as you walk that bumpy, sometimes hilly road, mean that if you stray off-track, you will have the map and the tools you need to find your way back faster.

Because, given that recovery isn’t a destination but a process, you may find yourself off course, sometimes long past the point where you thought you didn’t even need to think about the effort anymore.

That is no reason to despair, because you’ll have done this before. Back to putting one foot in front of the other, until you look back and realise just how far you’ve come.