What does "recovery" mean for you?

We hear the term "recovery" so many times in our healing journeys and yet it might have a completely different meaning for us than it does for someone else.
What does it look like ,incorporate for you? Does it have specific time oriented goals or is it a natural progression of work done? Do you think you will always be in some sort of recovery or maybe one day achieve a completion?
For us-we are DID-it would include discovering our major triggers and working to defuse them. Creating safety and a working inner landscape for all or parts(and there are a lot)
Because of our history we will most likely always be in "recovery" of some sort but the need for intense sessions has greatly diminished.
So we are hoping to hear what other thought,opinions and ideas people have and what it looks like to them

Recovery was getting to a place where I am now able to function contentedly, with stability, and not have my life run by my history, my symptoms, my fears, my anxieties. Recovery is feeling healthy and assured and pretty positive about life. It was a gradual process getting there, but once I got there, it felt very secure and firmly in place. I feel safe that whatever heads my way, I will be able to manage now because I have internalized what I need to do to take care of myself. I might need therapy or meds at some point down the road, but I feel pretty confident that it would be fairly brief in duration as the hardest work has been accomplished. From here on out, it would be refreshers, regrouping, and getting back on track, not starting from scratch.

I'm not sure. Because it's a journey. I'm not sure I can pin point 'things'. I mean I don't drink anymore. Haven't for 12yrs. But that doesn't mean I still don't want to drink. Is that recovery?
When the journey is still happening I'm so busy looking at the different places that I'm not really thinking about what's past?
I certainty would not allow myself to be abused now. So I guess I've recovered from that state of mind where I felt I deserved it. I dunno. Does it matter that I don't know? I guess not. Maybe that's recovery too?

Yes all of that is recovery as defined by you. For each it is a personal journey and with each day and new stage of our lives will be struggles and triumphs.
We were once addicted to xanax but no longer use it. Doesnt mean the urges dont happen at times but for us that is recovery. Thank you for sharing

That is wonderful to see how far you have come,very encouraging to see that one can indeed come to a place where the past no longer rules. Thank you for sharing!

Recovery means getting back to where you were before you got sick.

That wasn't enough for me. I needed more than "recovery", because I wasn't mentally healthy to begin with. I needed growth.

Invisible Butterfly,
I think recovery is synonymous with getting something back, to regain something like health. I personally prefer "healing." Recovery sounds little impersonal, distant, kind of medical. Also assumes a specific thing, specific illness. Healing is more poetic for me. You may not have fully recovered but you can be healed. In other words, you might have recovered, then something else happened and now you have to recover again but your journey of healing might be ongoing, not dependent on recovery from some mental disorder that's defined by latest DSM criteria. By that same token, being physically or mentally healthy (i.e. not meeting criteria for an illness) and yet you may not feel healed. I know, this is probably not making much sense, lol.

p.s. I'm sorry but I'm a little confused, when you say "For us-we are DID," by DID you mean the dissociative identity disorder? So the "we" is in reference to the identities you associate with?

Recovery implies a sickness- I am not sick or at least I don't feel I am. so I don't really like this term.
I like to think about therapy/my way of living as figuring out and working on some stuff I would like to change.

Anilam, I agree that we are none of us sick to begin with, just need something to help us be who we need to be....
But for me, I would feel a real achievement if I stopped having my anxiety disorder; if I was better able to behave in certain ways because its how I felt I wanted to respond at the time, not because of what expected of me; and to find some self compassion.

This is exactly what recovery means to me too.

I don't know. I was pretty sick quite honestly. I had been horribly wounded and that wound was an oozing, festering, infected, gaping ulcer in my life. It absolutely needed to heal because it really was causing me to be ill and would have eventually killed me.

Recovery means I can someday, somehow imagine living without T.

Partless-Yes "we" is in reference to our "parts" or identities for dissociative identity disorder

I had nothing to recover or heal from and was/am not ill. Those are not words I use around why I chose to hire a therapist.

Thank you for explaining invisible butterfly. Sorry you're dealing with DID, I recently read some personal accounts that has made me think DID is one of the toughest if not the toughest mental health disorder out there, and I hope we all recover and heal soon cause mental illnesses, in all their variety...just really suck! Lol, couldn't think of another word....

thank you partless. it definitely isnt easy!

What does it look like ,incorporate for you?

Recognizing and reaching out when I'm sick.

Does it have specific time oriented goals or is it a natural progression of work done? it is a natural progression

Do you think you will always be in some sort of recovery or maybe one day achieve a completion? I don't think "recovery" is in the cards for me but coping and living with this illness is.

There were problems in my young childhood and thereafter that significantly affected who I became. I now seek to discover, and bring to the light of day, who I really am.

For me it meant being able to stop the endless loop of negative thoughts, (PTSD?) memories and hurt that went round and round, round and round in my head every day blighting happiness.
Through much self help and meds those thoughts are now under control 80% of the time.
I still think of suicide most days, I think its a habit tho as I have no intention of doing that.