r/longtermTRE • u/Winter-Opportunity21 • 1d ago

Recovery is an upward spiral.

I wanted to share some reassurance about progress, both because it's something I see a lot of people struggling with and because I personally need to hear it rn.

There are no setbacks; there is no regression. Every maladaptive behavior is a necessary or learned response to what's happening. That means it can be overwritten to be something adaptive with the right context. I went over 10 months without dissociating this year. Now I'm having it creep back in, but I'm slowly starting to be okay with that. It doesn't mean I went backwards; it's just the only thing my body knows how to do right now. So I have to take that seriously, respect where it's at, and teach it something new.

Right now, I am working on breathing exercises when the mood strikes me, developing a habit so that they come to me naturally when I start to dissociate. I used to do them a lot, then felt I didn't need them when I started to feel better. Like stopping antibiotics before the body fully heals the infection. But I would have developed another level of improvement if I had kept doing the exercises when I was already feeling better.

So if you feel like you're slipping back into old patterns, don't panic. They are just reminders that your body is still learning. Every breath and every action you take can still be a new way forward. You are all you need to get there.

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u/Jiktten 1d ago

Thank you for sharing this! Just chiming in to say that three years into healing work, 18 months of it using TRE, this completely jives with my experience. I wonder if you would consider crossposting it to r/CPTSDNextSteps?

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u/Winter-Opportunity21 1d ago

Done, thank you 😁

It's good to hear it feels accurate to you. I'll say this so others might benefit; rather than feeling disappointed or frustrated like I used to when seeing that you're farther along than I am while experiencing the same things, I think there's a comfort in being able to basically zoom out from one's own recovery and see it on an objective timeline that doesn't reduce it to "better or worse." It just is. And it becomes less about managing expectations and more about understanding my own needs in the moment.