16.05.21: Healing is Not Linear
As much as we want it to be, recovery is not a logical series of forward steps. This week I discuss my own challenges with healing, and the problems with trying to measure progression.
When people ask me about healing, they often use the word ‘recovered’, as though there is a clear delineation between ‘well’ and ‘unwell’. I guess it’s easy to understand why: A wound opens, a wound closes, a wound heals.
But mental health is different. I don’t think there is ever such a thing as healed, not in the way people hope for. For a long time, this would terrify me - the idea that this battle is one I will never finish. That I will never be the person I used to be.
But I have come to believe that this isn’t as scary as it seems. That anxiety is a part of who I am, but it isn’t the only thing I am. That maybe, the person I’ve become is someone I’d rather be, and none of this would have happened without the journey that my mental health struggle has taken me on.
Without the trauma, without the anxiety, I never would have turned to poetry. I never would have built a career in writing, and I wouldn’t have the meaning that it brings to my life every day. I don’t think I would give this up for anything, and the dissonance that comes from feeling gratitude towards my anxiety has been hard to rationalise in recent months.
I have often heard people use the term ‘healing is not linear’ in relation to mental health, and I think I finally have an understanding of what that might mean - or at least, what that might mean for me.
The most frustrating thing about the process of recovery is that it’s so fragmented: There is no way of knowing if you’re really making progress, no end point, and things can be better or worse on any given day without you really understanding why. A couple of years ago I got on a plane to America, which was a big deal for someone with particularly bad travel anxiety, and I loved it. I returned to England wondering if I had wrestled some level of control over my mental health, only to suffer a panic attack for no apparent reason a few days later.
These unexplainable backward steps can be really hard to manage, especially if you felt like you were making progress. But I have learned to try not to see them as moving backwards, or as regression - they are just days, to be dealt with in isolation. I think this is why people refer to the process of recovery as non-linear: there are no milestones for you to track, no clean markers of progression.
We are often conditioned to look for these things, in part down to the language we use to describe a difficult process. We speak of moving forward, taking steps, reaching milestones, climbing, progressing, reaching the top of the mountain. All of these words suggest forward movement, so when we stand still, or fall backwards, we instinctively think we are somehow failing.
Understanding this has been a key part of coming to terms with who, and how, I am. I no longer look towards a finish line, no longer try to measure my progress. I know recovery will be a lifelong struggle, and I think I’m okay with that. It no longer matters if I feel anxious or have a bad day, but that I understand these things are not necessarily signs of regression - they do not make me a failure.
What matters is that I am willing to embrace the person I am, even when I want to be better. What matters is the understanding that ‘not healed’ is not the same thing as ‘not healing’.
Yours,
Blake
Your ability to talk openly about what is often viewed as a stigma is humbling and I thank you for choosing to share these parts of yourself. Sometimes standing still allows us the chance to see in all directions and to know which ever one we chose, we will be ok. 💙
No one is perfect, no one is a failure, and being emotionally aware is enough to go through with everything that comes towards you, being sensitive is the best and the worst that could happen to you, the best because helps you create your wonderful work, the worst because makes you suffer, but again that helps you too in your lines. I’m glad you had a wonderful trip, and admire your courage to overcome that.