something i don’t see a lot in tumblr’s rhetoric about mental illness and recovery is a distinction between recovery through suppression and conformity and recovery through coping.
suppression and conformity is not recovery. it implies that you are simply repressing the symptoms of your mental illness or disorder and causing yourself more pain. suppression implies that you are ignoring your mental illness, not acknowledging your symptoms, and conformity implies that you are putting on a neurotypical facade. so many people assume that’s the end goal of therapy and medication (should people choose to do that) or general recovery. that people are trying to “cure” you. it’s where i think a lot of the “i shouldn’t need to get better” rhetoric comes from.
but that’s not what recovery is. recovery is coping. it’s learning about yourself and how you tick. it’s learning to recognize and acknowledge symptoms so you can better understand them and, ultimately, not let them control you. it’s understanding that being “wired” differently isn’t a bad thing, but it can make things harder, and learning to recognize those distinctions and address them so you can make your life easier. it’s recognizing that for some people, therapy and medication are the path to coping, and that the end goal of them is to make that learning and self-discovery process easier so that those people can do it independently in the long run.
recovery is not changing yourself to fit the world. recovery is learning how to look the world in the eye and say “i now know how to coexist with you now. i now know how to thrive.”
