Thank you for posting this, it's really heartening to see peoples' responses.
For me personally, I don't identify with the term 'recovery' because I've kind of always been unwell in one way or another. It doesn't seem like there is a state of health to be recovered. Instead, I like the idea of 'discovery', learning what it is like to live without trauma and mental health issues dominating my life.
For me, the idea of discovery is a lot about trying new things (new ways of thinking and behaving), but largely changing how I relate to my emotions and my sense of self. Trying to stop self-harming and seeing suicide as an option is a massive part of that. I'm not putting any pressure on myself to necessarily overcome symptoms like hearing voices, flashbacks, dissociation etc because I think that will come in time and it's something I can't force. But I think my views are quite likely to change over time; right now reducing self-harm is the priority but I hope one day that won't be the case and I will be tackling other aspects of my health instead.
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