The first truly good day caught me off guard.

I woke up without the usual heaviness. My thoughts felt clearer. My body felt quieter.

Instead of relief, I felt alert.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I monitored myself more closely on good days than I ever had on bad ones.

This didn’t mean progress was fragile — it meant my body hadn’t learned to trust stability yet.

Why Good Days Felt More Threatening Than Bad Ones

Bad days were familiar.

I knew how to respond to them. I knew what to expect.

Good days, on the other hand, came without a script.

I didn’t know how to live inside a body that wasn’t constantly signaling distress.

This mirrored what I explored in why feeling almost better made me more anxious than feeling clearly sick.

Familiar discomfort can feel safer than unfamiliar ease.

How Vigilance Shifted From Symptoms to Stability

When I was sick, I watched for danger.

When I started improving, I watched for loss.

The focus changed, but the vigilance stayed.

My attention hadn’t relaxed — it had just found a new target.

This helped me understand patterns I had already named in why I kept scanning my environment for danger.

Healing doesn’t immediately dismantle protective habits — it repurposes them first.

Why I Treated Relief Like a Test I Could Fail

Each good day felt like a trial run.

If symptoms returned, I took it as proof that the good day hadn’t been real.

I didn’t yet understand that fluctuation was part of stabilization.

I thought consistency was required before I was allowed to relax.

This connected directly to why I didn’t feel relief right away even after I knew I was healing.

Trust doesn’t appear all at once — it builds through repetition.

The Shift That Helped Me Let Good Days Exist

What helped wasn’t convincing myself the good days would last.

It was letting them exist without interrogation.

I stopped asking what they meant and started letting them pass through normally.

The less I examined good days, the more frequently they appeared.

Stability grew when I stopped demanding guarantees from my body.

FAQ

Is it normal to distrust good days during recovery?
Yes. Many people remain cautious until stability feels familiar.

Does a bad day erase progress?
No. Fluctuation is part of integration, not failure.