Is recovery moving forward

[focusedbody]

This is a question that I posed on a different forum. I hope it's okay to post it here. It would be good to get some perspective from people who are doing the job of support as well.

Over the past several years, there have been times that people have commented to me that the steps to recovery might be two steps forward and one step back. In that way, things are moving along.

In the face of these observations, something in me occurs. It's something like, "if I take one step forward, that is great, no matter how many steps backward I take." I'm not even sure what this voice in me is saying. It may be a reaction to feeling scrutinized, and it may be that since healing is a process, it simply can't be measured.

What I do know is that obsessing about recovery and how many steps forward and back I take can sometimes be debilitating. When I do feel some growth in understanding, it is a gift. When I have an experience that I didn't think I could have had, I am proud of having gotten there.

Wondering if anyone else has some thoughts on the idea of taking away the measuring stick, so that recovery can flow more easily.

FB

 

[HealingHope]

Hi FB

I’m a supporter but not an active one as such because my survivor is not in touch anymore, but what I feel from your post is that the second you start to shift from denial into recovery, it doesn’t matter how many steps forward or back you go. That one huge step takes you into a whole different place, and I feel you can never go back fully to the place you were before. Every step is progress.
Hope that doesn’t sound like a riddle.
Best wishes HH

 

[Ceremony]

I'm not I posted in the other thread, I wish to make a post here. This quote of your consideration focusedbody is helpful.

When I do feel some growth in understanding, it is a gift. When I have an experience that I didn't think I could have had, I am proud of having gotten there.

Relating some sense of my own progress can be seen in those words. I hadn't known how much this journey involved, and have tried to be a student to my own Recovery. I've tried to note what each step of healing some part has been, and that's where what I quote above means so much to me. The parts that get to see what the healing will and is doing for them are what I have recognized and known as new.

To me, what I have been doing with parts, are going to what part of my age memory fits with the emotional state, reactions and physical responses I have to what I figure out is the cause of those. I've done that in therapy, with my T helping guide and keep me there. It's been very emotional. Sometimes I could feel my pre-frontal cortex, as if I could feel my synapsis firing, as they processed what my inner survivor has been keeping all these decades. It's been the re-wiring I have been thinking about. I want to keep experiencing that, because for me, that's been something I can feel physically as well as emotionally and cogently. This stuff is so complex, what I describe is hard to convey.

I hope one day that there's a known toolbox of therapy which can be brought forth on our behalf. I think my T could give offerings to such a book. I wonder what compilation of techniques we here could compile that have given back to us? Like EMDR, Sensorimotor, Neuro, etc..?

 

[dark empathy]

My view is slightly different.
I wouldn't say recovery is one step forward two steps back, since that indicates a definite direction to things which just often isn't the case.
From what I've experienced recovery is more like the journey Frodo in Lord of the rings.

Frodo makes ;a commitment to carry soemthing amazingly dangerous, something which he knows can and will destroy him if he leaves things as they are as it has destroyed so many before him.

it bends his mind, offers temptations and brings its own share of dangers with it, but Frodo knows he won't get any peace unless its destroyed, even though destroying it takes an amazingly long journey through unknown lands and that Frodo is more likely to die in the attempt.

Some of the places Frodo travels through are really nice places where he learns valuable lessons and gains gifts. Some of the places are dark and horrific. sometimes what Frodo is carrying feels light or makes him feel powerful, sometimes its heavy as a rock.

the same is true for Frodo's companions, indeed I love the way that in he book especially, Frodo isn't always a particularly nice person (I really don't like the vanilla version in the film).

Recovery is like that, it is a there is! only one direction, and that direction is forward, its just rather unfortunate that not all places you go through are particularly nice ones, and quite often the journey itself will breed pretty reactions in the traveller.

I don't know if there is an ending, if there is in fact a crack of doom where you can chuck all the bad stuff and watch it burn, but the important thing is to keep going in the belief that there might be.

As Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, the book my wife and I are reading together now puts it rather well.

Journey before destination.

Luke.

 

[Chris4TheMill]

Life in general seems to fit into the "3 steps forward, 2 steps back" paradigm.
It doesn't just apply to a recovery or healing journey.

That being said, it is just a euphemism, or just a polite kind of expression that tries to convey a feeling of general progress with some step-backs.

I would not take it too literally. It is there to serve you if you feel like saying to it someone, plus it sounds very descriptive without to many words.

But it is not really meant to be taken literally. All progress is good and is something to be thankful for.

- Chris