to extend the metaphor: when you’re at the beginning of your recover (less kindly known as rock bottom), you have a garden full of moles. you have a mole popping up every 5 seconds, and maybe it’s the same hyperactive mole, maybe it’s a bunch of moles taking turns, but whether they all look the same, you have a garden full of the fuzzy bastards.
so you pick up a mallet and start hitting. maybe you’re bad at using the mallet, maybe you get better over time, but after a while you get tired, bc you’ve been at it for ages and a mole is still popping up every 5, 10 seconds. what you don’t realize is, you’ve actually nerfed a lot of the moles. it’s just now there’s more space for the other ones to come to the surface and start making noise. but if you keep. swinging. the mallet. eventually they’re gonna slow down.
My recovery began when I started treating my depression & moved away from an abusive environment. It took a long time for me to realize I was recovering, bc as soon as one thing improved, another popped up. As my depression improved, I became more alert and active–and discovered that my brain fog & self-isolation had inadvertently been covering up my sensory issues. I had enough energy to start school again–and bc I wasn’t sleeping & lounging all day, I was suddenly aware of my concentration issues. One mole bites the dust, another pops up.
but the secret is: there are a finite number of moles in the universe.
4 years I’ve been wacking away at these fuckers with a mallet. I’ve taken turns wacking depression and its cronies suicidal ideation & self-harm, followed in succession by previous dormant crap related to anxiety, adhd, spd, c-ptsd, and other 👎 acronyms. And behold: progress. (Atm i’ve finally convinced the furry piece of shit called Executive Dysfunction to come out of the ground, which is exciting bc wrangling this bastard means finally getting to work on longterm personal projects again.) Moles still pop up from time to time, but my life has a lot more space for me in it
the moral of this story is: if u hit a mole over the head for long and hard enough eventually it learns to mind its own beeswax. KEEP WACKING