End Stage Anxiety Recovery - What Does It Look Like?

End Stage Anxiety Recovery – What Does It Look Like?

What does end stage recovery from an anxiety disorder look and feel like? How do you know when you’re recovered? Is there a moment when things change? Will you automatically be happy and joyful? What will like look like as you get closer to the recovery “finish line”. Lets talk about end stage anxiety recovery so you can have a bit of a road map to bring with you as you progress. It might help you stay out of some common traps.

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What Does End Stage Recovery Look and Feel Like?

Recovery doesn’t end at a finish line. There is no specific moment where one becomes “recovered” and the journey is over.
Recovery tends to end quietly. Your disorder will slip out the back door at 2 AM when nobody is looking. One day you’ll just wonder when you became mostly better.
Avoid the trap of expectations. Expecting a triumphant moment of recovery then chasing that moment can send you on a wild goose chase. Recovery is satisfying for sure. Just not in that way. The clear triumphant moment often does not exist, but that’s OK.
Recovery happens – and you reach the “end stages” – when experiences add up little by little over time. Those experiences change you bit by bit. It’s a slow, gradual process. There are moments of insight and realization but they are generally not terribly dramatic and none will ever by the “key moment” where you recover. They just pile on top of each other without you really noticing.
When you get down the road in recovery, you start to say yes to things you would NEVER say yes to previously. Or you’ll start to say no to things that you were sure you had to do in order to manage your anxiety, avoid your triggers, or stay safe.
As you progress in recovery you begin making choices based on what you value in life, not based on what you fear.
End stage anxiety recovery is generally defined by the shortened interval between the moment you get triggered and the moment that you move forward anyway without getting dragged into a three day spiral.
At some point you stop asking questions like, “What if I never get better?” or “What if it comes back?” You stop asking them because you realize that they’re not really questions any longer.
One day you will realize that you understand and believe the things you hear in this podcast, or in other podcasts, or in books written by people that sound like me and offer the same theoretical orientation to anxiety recovery. You understand and believe them because you acted consistently even when you didn’t understand or believe them.
End stage anxiety recovery feels largely … neutral. This is very important. Do not expect instant joy and constant happiness when you recover. That’s not the default state for humans. The opposite of anxious is content and neutral, not happy and grateful (or whatever else social media says you should “choose to feel”).
In the end, you will no longer make how you feel the most important thing in the room by default. Right now that’s largely automatic, isn’t it? When you get nearer to the recovered state, how you feel will no longer be an emergency. When you get there, you’ll regain the ability to actually treat your feelings and your state as important when it makes sense to do that and it serves a purpose, not just because you are afraid and trying to safe yourself. This is why recovery is not learning to be a robot, but learning to be a more capable human – emotions and all!