Three Recovery Habits

Being proactive can take the form of doing your own laundry once a week, or cooking meals for yourself, or committing to taking the medication every day. It does require being aware of triggers, developing coping skills, and monitoring things, and adjusting your responses as you go along, based on new approaches to try that might work better.

3. Write your own definition of recovery.

I'd like to re-visit this chestnut now. It is clear to me that one can have recovered yet still have days where he or she struggles. "Recovery is a process, not an endpoint," as the expression goes. So why do I consider myself "recovered from" for the purposes of the Connection? I won't downplay the role I played in coping with the worst of the symptoms and living through the hard times. [For the same reason I won't over-pack and schlep big suitcases through an airport-I'm well-organized.] So I take the credit for arriving here with my sanity mostly intact. What's my definition of recovery? Every year that I'm able to stay out of the hospital and continue to have a writing career.

For you, choose your own benchmark. Visualize what your recovery will look like in vivid detail. Write out one complete paragraph of what your life is like when you've recovered-so that you can see, touch, taste, smell, and feel it coming true.

These three habits-striving to be well, remaining proactive, and writing your own definition of recovery- increase our self-esteem, and good feelings about ourselves could be in short supply. Establishing these habits allows us to love, honor, nurture and protect ourselves right where we are at this given moment.

I'd love to know what you think about this, so do post comments if you'd like. I look forward to hearing from you.

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A Chris update: I called my friend, and he's calling me back tomorrow morning. He has stitches in his mouth and gauze, so perhaps he had dental work. The next day he called promptly at nine o'clock, as he said he would, and we had a delightful conversation. He suggested I could call him any time to talk about what's going on. As usual, the damage control I felt I had to do-was all in my head. We made plans to meet in two weeks after work for coffee.