The Quiet Stagnation Nobody Talks About in Recovery and Healing

Malleable.

Yep, there it is again. That word I love so much. It’s what helped my ex-husband and me learn that there was a way to train our brains away from unhealthy behaviors and thinking patterns.

We learned that we could retrain our brains and create new healthy pathways.

How exciting is that?

But there’s a caveat to that retraining. It doesn’t stop there. We have to stay aware that we’re still susceptible to triggers and can end up on a slippery slope.

I like to think of recovery and healing as a garden. We carefully till the soil, plant the seeds of tools, let them take root, and enjoy their growth. Just like any other garden, we tend to it by pulling out the weeds, things that don’t support our journey or could be obstacles. We fertilize it by doing something every day to support our recovery or healing.

If we don’t tend to our garden, then we risk setbacks and relapse.

A dangerous place for our minds is stagnant and complacent. We may think, “Welp, it’s been ten years, I’m good. I don’t need to worry about my recovery or healing.”

We found great tools, did the therapy, went to support groups and meetings…and we felt good. But life still goes on. Challenges happen. Stressors pile up. And while we think we’re doing well, we may find that the tools we’ve relied on aren’t working as well as they used to, and we may not notice.

It’s possible that if we’re stagnant and complacent for a long period of time, we can start to lose the progress we've made in our emotional sobriety.

Old resentments can creep in, empathy can erode, and those old friends like passive-aggressiveness or anger can start to show up.

Before you know it, your mind is whispering those negative thoughts again and telling you things that aren’t true.

How will I know?

If you stay in stagnation and complacency for too long, you risk slipping back into old habits:

• Lying

• Rationalization

• Hypervigilance

• Denial

You also risk new, unhealthy behaviors forming:

• Coping mechanisms (overeating, doomscrolling, shifted addiction)

• Numbing to cope

• Isolation

• Poor communication

The unexpectedness of it all

There was a period when my ex-husband and I thought we were okay because so much time had passed. We had already done the therapy, learned the tools, worked through disclosures, and rebuilt so many parts of our lives.

But over time, some of the emotional upkeep slipped into routine.

Not all at once. Quietly.

Just like recovery and healing move at different paces, so did our individual emotional sobriety. It was something I didn’t expect.

There was a slow erosion of the mentality of “What can I do to help?” and “How can we make this better?” after a family event that hurt feelings.

We communicated, but things like emotional distance, avoidance, resentment, defensiveness, and falling back into unhealthy patterns slowly started showing up again.

And because there wasn’t some huge explosive event happening, it would’ve been easy to minimize it or pretend it wasn’t a problem. But I made myself a promise when I created this boundary, and that’s what I’ve chosen to do:

“For me to feel safe and at peace in this relationship, I need to be with someone who’s in active, healthy recovery. When that’s not happening, it creates anxiety for me, and I’ll need to step back or leave the relationship.”

That’s the tricky thing about stagnation. It doesn’t always scream for your attention.

Sometimes it looks like going through the motions.

Sometimes it looks like surviving instead of connecting.

Sometimes it whispers.

Sometimes it looks like two people who love each other but stopped tending to the garden they worked so hard to grow.

That’s part of why I wanted to write this post.

Not because I think every recovery or healing journey ends this way, but because I think awareness matters. I still carry hope for those struggling (because he’s still sober; he simply needs to work on his emotional sobriety), for those healing (because I healed), and for those in relationships (because I’ve seen success stories).

What helps me

Remember the two pathways, the positive and the negative? The positive is lush, beautiful, and filled with healthy behaviors, while the negative is thorny, overgrown, and filled with unhealthy crap. The more you travel down the positive path, the easier it is to make positive choices.

You need to pay attention to that pathway, too, because we’re not the version of ourselves we were when we started our journey.

This is an opportunity to revisit old tools with new eyes. Here are some ideas you can try:

• Journaling differently

• Revisiting old workbook exercises

• Returning to grounding exercises

• Updating your WHY statement

• Rewriting boundaries based on current life

It’s also an opportunity to give the tools we discarded another chance.

Here are some ideas you can try:

• A new support group

• A different type of therapy

• Podcasts/books outside your normal comfort zone

• Mindfulness practices

• Hobbies that reconnect you to yourself

• Volunteering/helping others

These are great ways to give your brain a little wake-up nudge and say, “Hey, I was running on autopilot, but I’m ready to open up those new pathways again!”

Sometimes, it can be challenging to know if you’re coasting along. Answering these questions honestly can help you figure it out:

• Am I isolating?

• Have I become reactive again?

• Am I emotionally available?

• Am I communicating honestly?

• Am I turning to unhealthy coping strategies?

• Are my loved ones noticing a change?

• Do the people closest to me feel safe with me?

• Am I coping or connecting?

Something that helps me is staying active in recovery and healing spaces. I don’t attend meetings or support groups, but having those places to contribute…and keep me honest with myself has helped me stay emotionally sober and maintain challenging boundaries.

I may be clean from my DOC, healed from my traumas, but I still need to maintain awareness. I need to be mindful that I can drift toward denial, and it helped me recognize the signs of my ex-husband’s struggle with emotional sobriety after so many years of doing well.

Remember, it doesn’t take a huge, monumental change. There are easy things you can do to interrupt what’s become routine in our brains:

• Changing daily routines

• Spending less time numbing online

• Reconnecting with creativity

• Movement/walking

• Intentional conversations

• Taking inventory of resentment and avoidance

Stagnation and complacency aren’t guaranteed parts of every recovery or healing journey. They’re simply possibilities to stay mindful of. Think of this less as “This is absolutely going to happen” and more as a gentle reminder that growth still needs tending, even years later.

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