5 Signs You're In Recovery

As a society we speak a lot about what is wrong with us. How we can improve or progress. Whilst it is perfectly healthy to want to better ourselves, we can never really appreciate the now if we are constantly worrying about the future. Furthermore, it can be important, particularly for those of us who have been overcoming past trauma, to take a moment to live in the present and appreciate how far we have come. After all, isn’t that what we have been bettering ourselves for? To step out of the past, away from the anxiety of the future and into the present?

On that note, here are five things that may occur when you’re in recovery, but don’t even know it yet.

You Have Begun to Trust People Again

One of the biggest impacts any kind of traumatic event can have on us is that it can cause us to lose our trust in others. The reason for this is usually one of self-preservation, to survive. But losing trust in everyone around you can cause you to become cynical and isolated…. which can end up becoming a vicious cycle of feeling that you’re the only person you have in the world making you close yourself off to any and all potential life experiences.

When in recovery you start to see the good in others again, and consequently yourself. You become open to new experiences and perspectives. You start to find it easier to distinguish between whether somebody is behaving inappropriately towards you or if your emotional reaction has more to do with your own trauma. And you are able to communicate that because you have begun to trust that the people you have invited into your circle have your best interests at heart. Most importantly, you are starting to realise that you are not on your own, nor do you only have one or two people in the world. You are starting to create a thriving support system that works for all parties and you feel more secure in the knowledge that there are others who look out for you.

You Have Begun to Trust Your Own Instincts Again

Dependent on the kind of trauma that was endured, oftentimes you can end up not trusting your own instinct. You may have been lied to by those you thought you could trust. You may have been in an abusive dynamic for too long or have been gaslighted by others so much that you started gaslighting yourself to justify the pain. Once you start gaslighting yourself your sense of reality can become distorted and you can find it difficult to trust your own thoughts and feelings.

When you enter the recovery phase, you start to realise the reality of what has happened – including all of the external factors which had caused you to become untrusting of yourself in the first place. Making decisions for yourself becomes a lot easier; this is good because it means that you’re leaning less on others to validate your existence. You understand that although not everyone has your best interests at heart, you can be the reliable person you need. You realise the importance of being there for yourself and being more in tune with your wants and needs. Being more in tune with what you need makes it less easy for others to cross your boundaries and solidifies that you are worth more than the way you’ve been treated.

You Feel Less Anxious Around Setting Boundaries and Are Better Able to Stick to Them

On the subject of boundaries, if you’re in the recovery phase, you’ve probably been starting to figure out the type of relationship dynamics you want to have and what sort of behaviour is absolutely crossing a line.

You have begun to learn more about yourself and others around you. It is finally beginning to sink in that the world won’t come to an end when you enforce reasonable boundaries. And if it does for certain people, that you don’t really want to be with those people because you’re better than that.

A lot of people from your past may be acting out because they’ve grown used to being able to smash through your boundaries. You may even slip up sometimes and allow these people to cross certain lines because of your previous attachments to them. Who wouldn’t? As humans we want to connect with others. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for this. With time and practice you’re beginning to realise that you’re worth more than over-compromising yourself for those who would scarcely do the same for you. No exceptions.

You Are Better Able to Identify and Control Your Reactions to What Triggers You

Although experiencing certain triggers may still feel hurtful, you are able to navigate your emotions around the subject with a lot more control and clarity. It’s important to note that the pain you feel (or have felt) as a result of certain triggers are often deep-rooted or unresolved crises that you usually haven’t had the opportunity to process properly.

By this point in your recovery, you will have typically found a way (whether through life experiences, solo self-work, or therapy) to identify what your triggers are. This is half of the battle as our emotions can feel so much scarier when we aren’t aware of why we’re having an adverse reaction to something.

When you start to process this pain and understand the events that led to the creation of these triggers in the first place, you begin to realise that you’re not stuck in the past, that you’ve learnt, and that none of what happened to you back then can get to you here in the present. You realise that you have a choice, to continue to live in fear of your own shadow, or to begin to heal. To cultivate a new life for yourself and to decide to do everything possible to not let past events have that kind of power over you anymore.

You Have Hope For The Future

Last but definitely not least, even if it’s just an inkling, you have begun to feel hope for the future. This is quite possibly the most important of all of the above points that tell you you’re in recovery. This can happen at any point during your healing process. Sometimes it is a smidge of hope at the beginning of your recovery that pushes you towards making better choices for yourself.

You may feel as if you’d lost yourself for a while. You may have even mourned for the past version of yourself, worried that you’d never be the same as you were before your trauma. Now however, you might be beginning to realise that, while yes, you will never be the person you were before your trauma, that doesn’t mean that you have to remain forever affected by what happened. As you pick up the pieces of the parts of yourself you left behind, you come to discover that you quite like who you’ve become.

There is a temptation in recovery to worry about whether you’re going to go back. There is the temptation to catastrophise, to put yourself on edge anticipating the one thing that will surely cause you to trip up and push you back into the state of mind you’ve tried so hard to distance yourself from. But you are better able to rationalise with yourself, to remember that the past is just that. That even though there will inevitably be further bumps in the road at some point, you’re only going forwards and you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it. And when you do come to it, you’ll be armed with the knowledge that you’ve been there before, but you persevered and you came out the other side, and you can do it again.

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It's important when you're in recovery to avoid falling into the trap of pretending everything is positive. The point of being in recovery is not to ignore your feelings but to process them in a healthy way. Learn how to avoid this kind of pitfall here:

If you want to continue the conversation, you can find me over on @OptimismWrites