If there’s one thing to learn from the body-focused repetitive behaviour (BFRB) community, it’s that different people have different steps they take to reach recovery and that recovery looks different from person to person. That can make it difficult to have conversations about recovery because it looks so many different ways, which can make it confusing to know what to do.
But there’s something brilliantly hopeful about that.
Think about it.
There’s no one path to recovery, which means that if something doesn’t work for you, you can try something else. Maybe traditional therapy won’t work for you, so you can try seeing a BFRB coach instead. Maybe you’ll find success with things like fidget toys or colouring. Maybe it’ll be changing your diet. Maybe it’ll be working with no-pick or no-pull challenges. Maybe it’ll be accepting the BFRB as a part of your life.
You can mix and match and revise how you approach your BFRB, managing it, and even your recovery as you go. You can find something that fits and makes sense to you and brings you hope and peace.
There are typically two schools of thought when it comes to BFRBs: stopping the behaviour entirely or accepting the disorder without focusing on stopping. These can both be forms of recovery. It’s also important to consider that recovery is a spectrum. You might fall at one end of that spectrum or the other, maybe even somewhere in between. You might one day feel you want to stop, the next feel that you can accept the BFRB.
Maybe you don’t know where you fall yet. Maybe you haven’t started looking at recovery. That’s okay. It’s a process that we have to figure out.
Apart from this, recovery can also be divided into different areas, like clinical recovery and personal recovery. According to Rethink Mental Illness, clinical recovery has to do more with your diagnosis and your doctor’s designation of where you are in recovery. It can mean a drastic reduction or absence of symptoms, which therefore leads to a better quality of life. As for personal recovery, it’s at about achieving that meaningful life on your own terms.
We want to take this BFRB Awareness Week to introduce you to BFRB recovery and some of the shapes it can take. We want to show you that recovery may not look like you expect, but that it’s possible. Feeling like you’re suffering with your BFRB doesn’t have to be eternal, and although recovery can be difficult and have ups and downs, hope exists for BFRBs.
CBSN’s mission is to be here to support those in the BFRB community, and that includes as you take your steps to BFRB recovery.
Additional reading about mental health recovery
Recovery and mental illness—Rethink Mental Illness
Recovery—Canadian Mental Health Association Toronto
Guidelines for Recovery-Oriented Practice—Mental Health Commission of Canada