You might have found the perfect path to Recovery is Not Absolute for yourself. You could have hauled yourself out of the tar pits of depression, held your anxiety until it softened, placed yourself fully in the world and sought out what you want to do with your life; you could be perfectly happy, and yet your idea of happy is not someone else’s idea of happy.
Even if you do agree with someone else on what a good life looks like, you will likely have differences in how you reach that goal. What works for you might make another person miserable. The truths you’ve found along the way could be entirely wrong for someone else. Some things may be generalizable, but the majority of ideas will not apply to everyone alive.
We have inequitable opportunities:
- Some people are born into less supportive families than others, and access to a supportive network of people isn’t always available- consider abusive families, off-grid families, communities with embedded generational trauma and hurtful norms, foster children and children who had to move frequently, etc.
- Some people can’t afford therapy or find that it only makes their situation worse- some people are even traumatized by the mental health system itself.
- Some people can’t move out of an abusive home or escape an abusive partner. They may be disabled, in poverty, isolated, or otherwise unable to access the means to support themselves.
- Some people will endure ongoing trauma through no fault of their own even if they do everything possible to help themselves: consider racism, class discrimination, homophobia and transphobia, disability, systemic abuse, etc.
We have different life experiences and neurologies:
- Some people developed in ways that force them to engage with the world differently to how you experience it; a calming stimulus for you might be painful or distressing for them, or they may need a different means to understand a concept than what worked for you.
- Some people have tried every exercise in the book and found that most of them did absolutely nothing to help them; they may have had to come up with their own methods to cope with the world.
- Some people’s past experiences mean that a given coping skill may be confusing or harmful to them: e.g. someone with trauma related to asthma may not find breathing exercises soothing.
We have different life goals:
- Some people will have very different goals for their recovery than what you want for yourself; they may have opposing ideas of what it means to be healthy and happy.
- Some people may not want help, now or ever; what you consider to be disordered may be what keeps them functioning in a difficult situation, and that situation may not be escapable (e.g. chronic pain and dissociation as a coping skill).
Let people follow their own paths. If someone asks for advice, then it’s okay to provide pointers from your own lived experience, but remember that those experiences are not universal. Your advice may not work for them, and that’s okay.
Likewise, they may have different goals from you. Those goals may look harmful from your perspective. If you’re really worried, then it’s okay to (gently!) ask whether those goals would actually be helpful, but don’t force your idea of Recovery is Not Absolute onto them. Let them make the final judgement call. The most that you can do is add a different perspective if they’re open to considering what you have to say.
Even the paths laid out in this garden won’t apply to a lot of people. These are ideas that I personally find helpful. Take what works and leave the rest; we all have different needs.
I think the risks of harm are lower when people are able to sit with the idea that there may be many paths for people, and one is not necessarily better or worse than another, that what is supposed to happen for them will happen, and that {regardless of who you are} if you are decent to people, animals, and the planet, you are not a failure.
Sarah K Reece, What’s the Deal with Integration?, 2015