I find a lot that when I read a lot of pro-recovery stuff I feel even worse about my recovery and my self? Every time I see a long tumblr post chain or thread about pro-receroy and people talking about how much they've recovered and that you can do it - you just have to put in a lot of effort and know it'll be really hard -- and I sit there and think "But I'm already putting a lot of effort in. It already is really hard. And I've not gotten anywhere". And I just want to give up because I haven't gotten better in 10 years and everyone seems to be seeing progress in one or two years. I never actually give up because I haven't met a brick wall yet my head doesn't like and I don't want to upset people, but it does feel a little pointless at this point. Is this something others feel like? Is this a common thing thinking like this?
This might just be my brainweird, but thinking about my mental health on the timescale of years never works for me. I try to practice good habits, and remember that there are always going to be good days and bad days. I never thought of "recovery" as meaning I won't be depressed or anxious any more, I think of it as meaning that there's things I can do to have the best life I can get.
First I'd consider that you might be having some brainweird lying to you about how far you've come. If you are putting in effort every day, I'm sure some things have changed quite a bit, it's just never going to ever feel like you're entirely better, that isn't how it works. Like @TheSeer said, it's good days and bad days one at a time forever, it's just learning skills to try to make things a bit easier on yourself. If you really do feel like you haven't made much progress at all even after trying to think about it with a less critical mind, it might be that you are exerting all your effort in the wrong direction, that what you have been trying just isn't working. This can range from meds just not really working for you or that forcing yourself to do x y z is just making you more miserable than taking a gentler approach might be. The thing with long success story posts is you also might not be getting the entire picture.. some things really just make it easier for people to make big strides in recovery faster. They could just have a less severe illness, they could have had a lot of help and a good support system that not everyone will have access to, they could be fairly young and less 'set in their ways'. Like there is a huge difference between a teenager with depression and supportive parents who get them the help they need making rapid recovery steps and progress, and an older adult from an abusive background who got little to no support as a youth and has just been struggling every day all the way from their youth through out their adulthood. It'd be unfair for that adult to hold themselves to the same standards of recovery progress.
In fact, I'm dubious about the whole concept of holding patients to "standards of recovery progress" at all. (Or of patients holding themselves to such.) What's the point of that? The patient has to get better in a certain time frame, or... what? Or it becomes okay to blame them for being sick? Or they're faking it to get attention? Or they should give up and die? I could see doctors or treatments being held to standards for patient recovery, in a statistical sort of way. But patients? The whole concept seems poisonous. (Meaning no offense to @Aniseed, who was just responding to ideas implicit in the OP.)
I think a lot of people with mental illnesses do hold themselves to some sort of idealized fast recovery time.. less so because of doctor pressure, more just self pressure and societal pressure. There's a lot of narrative from other people about how they know so and so who knows so and so who had such and such mental illness and they took this medicine and did this type of therapy with this therapist and then just a year later they were so much better! Which is a dishonest and detached narrative and/or the person was just incredibly lucky. So then when you try that medicine and go to that doctor and it just isn't working out for you and years later you feel like you haven't made much if any progress, you feel like you're the one at fault somehow and it's somehow you not trying hard enough or whatever.
It might help if you tell someone who's known you all through the recovery process that you don't feel like you've improved/ask them if you have improved. I get this brainweird sometimes, and when I do I message SO or a bff with something like, "I'm just really frustrated because I feel like I haven't gotten anywhere re: recovery/treatment from brainweirds." Inevitably, the response is something like, "That is nonsense, you have improved, because...etc." They're always right, too. It could be that your own brainweirds are lying to you because they're evil. It could be that you're just too close/entrenched in the whole recovery process to see the progress you HAVE made, whereas someone on the outside might have a better perspective on it. It could be both! But yes, others feel like that all the time. It's perfectly alright to feel that way. And it's better to talk about it than to quietly feel that it's pointless by yourself, so thanks for posting here and asking! (...I say, in a super cheesy way that probably sounds less sincere than it actually is)
Well, and also even if it NEVER goes completely away, you get better at understanding and living with it over time. Just this last week, ive been struggling with suicidal ideation a lot. Twelve years after the first time i started getting treatment for depression. But this time i understand the difference between things i really want to do and my brain being a dick. I have tools for coping with depression trying to eat my ability to self-care, i know how to respond to negative self-talk. Im still depressed. I still struggle. Im still back here doing this same shitty stupid dance yet a-fucking-gain. But its not quite the same this go round either. And i bet if you look its not for you either.
