[Chia.]

Recovery involved becoming more aware of how I was feeling and being able to allow myself to sit and experience those feelings.

Feelings scared me, some of them overwhelmed me to the point where I thought I was losing control. This loss of control sent me into fight-or-flight, which is our bodies natural survival instinct. When I was in that basic primitive state I lost contact with the higher functioning part of me.

Being recovered, for me, involved me becoming responsive to life rather than being reactive to it. This is similar to what the poster before me said, it's managing my life rather than life managing me.

Something I realised much later about being recovered was that it also involved the re-discovery of other people. Everything was all about me and I was too wrapped up in my own things to be able to care about or get involved with what was going on for other people. This didn't mean I didn't care or that I was a bad person, it meant that I needed to be cared for, for a while until I recovered. I needed to be selfish, but that isn't a bad thing. I never got the chance to be spoiled with care before, like every child should be, and that was part of the problem that was stopping me maturing.
Then one day I really noticed something. It hit me like nothing I had ever experienced before. I could see the pain in other people's eyes when something bad was happening for them. It effected me. I cared. I was able to listen to them and really hear them.
I was more attuned with the facial expressions of others and I knew what they were feeling. I was able to have meaningful eye contact with others that didn't fill me with fear or shame, but trust and care.

Being recovered doesn't mean that you won't ever cry or ever feel down, depressed, anxious, angry or shame. Everyone feels these things, even people who have never had to deal with trauma and people who seem to have had a good life.
Being recovered, for me, is me maturing, becoming part of a mutual social network and becoming responsible. It can be hard. Life doesn't automatically become full of rainbows. I have to make my own rainbows, and sometimes I just don't feel like it. But the rainbows do exist, I know I can make them happen and that I can enjoy them.