Survival of a Self-Injurer

About two months ago, my father wrote a post on Being a Dad Through Self-Injury. He came to me today saying that it had a lot of hits from people looking for help with self-harm themselves. Although his post was amazing and really opened my eyes on his perspective, it’s mainly focused on being the parent, relative or friend of a self-injurer. So I thought I would write a post in the perspective of the self-harmer himself or herself.

For most self-injurers, it’s not about “attention,” it’s about feelings. Granted it might have started out as attention-seeking, self-injury is extremely addicting. I’ve done drugs, and I am a drug addict. However, I think I would have to say that self-injury was harder for me to overcome than my crack/cocaine addiction. I started self-injuring at the age of seven. I am now seventeen and it’s been eight months since I have self-harmed – the longest stretch of time I’ve ever gone free of self-injury. For me, it started as attention. I always had a low self-esteem and the constant thought that no one noticed or cared. So when I was seven, I started scratching my arms raw at the dinner table.

No one said anything until I was eleven or twelve. That was when it got bad. At age eleven, I started experimenting with box-cutters (X-acto blades) and it was no longer about attention. Very quickly, my experimentation lead into an addiction. I was no longer self-harming because I wanted people to see me, it was now all about how I dealt with myself and coped.

When I was twelve, I moved to self-injuring razorblades. By this time, I was also using drugs – specifically marijuana and pills. Although I wasn’t using drugs daily quite yet, I was self-harming on several occasions per day, every day. It got really bad. But not only was it bad for myself, I was also harming my parents, my brother, my family, and my friends in ways I couldn’t fathom until I finally stopped. I had several people try to tell me this, but at the time all I could do was scoff at them.

When I was thirteen, I had my first suicide attempt through self-injury. It happened because not only did I have one person in my life constantly telling me to do it (he was kind of abusive), but I had also found out my parents were going through with a divorce. I remember thinking, “Well, that’s great. Just add one more thing to our broken home…” My father ended up taking me to the ER, I received stitches, and went on my way.

My self-harm progressed for three more years. In that course of three years, I lived through another suicide attempt at sixteen and I accumulated scar after scar. In those three years, I also went in and out of psychiatric wards for my self-harm and drug usage. I even went to a self-injury specific program in Denton, Texas called UBH. Through all the programs and all the help I tried to get, I still continued to self-injury. Maybe it was because I wasn’t ready yet and still had to hit a bottom, but I really don’t know. Some things are just left the unknown, I suppose.

However, the point is that I’m ready now. I spent the last eleven months locked up in both a Juvenile Detention Center and a nine month rehab. In fact, my first month and a half in rehab, I was STILL self-harming. Eventually, I started really getting into God at church programs we had there at the rehab. I also threw myself into my recovery and came to the conclusion that I don’t ever want to be that person I used to be.

I read one of the comments on my dad’s blog entry about my self-harm.

I want to say from a personal perspective, as an adult who was there – we get beyond it. We grow up and move on … It passes. One day, maybe like me she’ll wake up and wonder who that person was, that she was, who did that to herself.
– Joely Black

And that really hit be, because one of the biggest things I think about recently is: “Why did I have to go through all that CRAP to get to where I am today?” Really though, I believe that if I hadn’t gone through all these trials and tribulations in life, I would be of no help. I would have no insight, no experience, strength or hope. Today I can say I’m grateful that I went through the battle of self-harm, because now that I’m on the other side, I pray all I can do is help others fighting the same battle.

Today, I can sit down and express my feelings whereas in the past, the only feelings I had were the physical feelings of pain. It took a very long time for me to be able to say all this, but now I think it’s my time to give back. I went through it, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and now I can help.

The hardest thing I’ve had to learn how to do is to sit down and feel my feelings. I wrote yesterday in a blog post that Morrie from a book called Tuesdays With Morrie about detaching from our feelings, and I had a long conversation with Margaret about detaching from our feelings. Not only was in nice to connect with someone who’s read Tuesdays With Morrie, but to also connect on an insightful level.

We talked about the process of feeling our feelings, and then just letting them go. It’s a lot easier said than done, but once practiced it becomes a lot easier. I had a lot of time to practice being locked up for eleven months and I’ve found that fully relying on God has been the best medicine to heal myself, for refraining from any addiction is NOT based on willpower, but God-power. Again, this is indeed easier said than done; however, once practiced it becomes a lot easier.

This blog post was very difficult for me to write because I haven’t looked at where I’ve come from to what I am in quite a while. It was hard for me to express and open up to everything. However, my only prayer is to be that I can help someone else that’s been through what I have. Well, I hope this helps, and if it does it’s all worth the while.

It’s your move to make.

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Tags: battle self-harm, cut, cutting, Experience, help on cutting, help on self-harm, help on self-injury, Hope, self-harm, self-injury, self-mutilation, strength, surviving self-injury

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Experience, Hope, Insight, strength. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.