When left unaddressed and untreated, mental health disorders can impede your ability to function in daily life. It can be incredibly frustrating to experience symptoms that make ordinary tasks, like getting out of bed or talking to people, feel impossible to complete. Seeking support can be helpful for symptom management. While treatment mental health recovery is not a means for symptom elimination, it can foster a life that is more meaningful for you through personal recovery.
What Is Personal Recovery?
According to an article from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, personal recovery focuses on recognizing the need to build a meaningful life despite a mental health disorder. Through personal recovery, you learn that symptoms do not need to be eliminated to truly experience healing. In other words, recovery is about more than coping with symptoms. Rather, personal recovery is the process of adaption and development to overcome the negative personal and social barriers of your disorder. Therefore, the goal of personal recovery is not to make you neurotypical but to find meaning and fulfillment in life as a neurodivergent person.
Living Meaningfully
As noted in an article from Frontiers in Psychiatry, a mental health disorder diagnosis can lead to a loss of self-identity. When your identity becomes about your disorder, it can make it difficult to imagine a life that is not impeded by your mental health. Therefore, identifying only with what makes your mental health disorder difficult can lead you to lose your sense of purpose. A lack of purpose makes setting and achieving long-term recovery goals difficult.
With personal recovery, you can learn to redefine your identity as multidimensional. Through a multidimensional self-identity, you realize you are more than your mental health disorder. As you strengthen your self-identity, you can develop interpersonal and intergroup identities that support building purpose in your life. Thus, five elements of personal recovery can support a multidimensional sense of self.
Elements of Personal Recovery
Listed below are the five key elements formed in personal recovery:
- Connectedness
- Hope and optimism
- Identity
- Meaning
- Purpose and empowerment
Moreover, through person-centered care, you can build personal recovery for a meaningful life.
Value of Person-Centered Care at the Guest House
At The Guest House, we know mental health disorders behave like chronic physical illnesses. Moreover, mental and emotional symptoms can come and go over time. We believe in the value of a person-centered approach to recovery that focuses on building a long-term management plan to support your stability. With regular treatment, you have more psychological tools to build a life that is not controlled by your disorder.
Here at The Guest House, we know the healing process is different for everyone. Thus, we are committed to supporting your personal recovery with a wide range of therapeutic modalities to build a care plan that makes sense for you. Discovering your particular needs and interest is an integral part of your recovery, as you work collaboratively with your therapist to find therapies and activities that will support you in the rediscovery of yourself.
Living with an untreated mental health disorder can lead to the loss of self-identity. However, personal recovery can be an invaluable recovery tool for identity, purpose, and empowerment as you develop a sense of self that does not attempt to eliminate all your symptoms but to find meaning and fulfillment as a neurodiverse person. At The Guest House, we offer a variety of therapeutic modalities through a person-centered approach to support your long-term wellness. Call us at (855) 483-7800 today.