How long are you "clean"? If you aren't what is keeping you back?

It's been maybe...4 months?? I think.

Still going through therapy for what it does to me mentally.

My life is great, and my family is lovely. We're a chill household and I've never suffered abuse. And yet, I have severe anxiety about my self-image and get onset depression for no valid reason. There is no reason I should feel the way I feel, but I do. Same thing for SH. When I began doing it, it wasn't because I was sad or angry or anxious. I just felt a "longing" to do it. When I finally did, I felt like I did something meaningful; like I actually went through with completing a huge task I would normally be too scared to do.

It's like a freedom for me, even though there's nothing keeping me trapped (if that makes sense?? It probably doesn't).

But it is how I learned I have addictive tendencies. I tried stopping...and I couldn't. It was all I could think about through my days, interrupting my work and family time. I needed it. I've even gone through withdrawals. I didn't understand I was "addicted" until I went to therapy for a totally separate reason and told her about my habits. I thought my SH was a good thing until then.

Here's what I've learned:

-Addictions can be anything and come from anywhere. They are as mentally damaging as they can be physically damaging (any habit carves neural pathways in our brain, and going against it can make our bodies think our sense of "normal" is under attack and will do what it can to keep us from correcting it).

-I've discovered the reason SH is a "good" thing for me, is because growing up I unintentionally trained my body and mind that punishing myself was the only way to feel at ease for something I felt guilty for (even if it wasn't my pain I was feeling). I'm naturally an empath and the feelings of others rubs off on me even if I don't want it to, so any emotions are multiple times tougher to deal with. (I was made aware of this by the Adults in my life, but I was never taught how to cope with it).

I'm currently (very slowly) accepting that relapse does not mean you've erased your progress. It's part of healing and getting better. I think what matters is the intention of the heart: Are you struggling at all with this? Do you feel guilt or shame or even confusion about who you are because of this? Then it means you're on the right track. You're fighting it even if you don't know it. Every negative emotion and thought comes from somewhere and is a signal something needs attention inside you.

If it gets too much, the pain, the anxiousness, the darkness, manic feelings-- if things get really bad and you don't know why, tell yourself this: "Not forever."

All this is what I wish I was told when I learned I needed healing. I hope this can encourage someone. 🙏

@cheerfulKiwi1776 ummmm i have been clean for 5 and a half hours....somthing thats stopping me is IDK how else to signal that i am struggleing but.......yeah its fine

I have been clean for a little over 12 years now. I engaged in self-harm for about 10 years before being able to stop hopefully for good now. At the time it was an "easy" decision to stop. I say easy in quotation marks because I had recently relapsed then for the first time in maybe a year or so and it did not bring the familiar relief or help I was looking for. It wasn't easy though to accept that something that had gotten me through some really rough and dark parts of my life was no longer an option to feel any sense of relief like it used to. However, that lack of relief did help in my decision to stop. I didn't know then if my decision would truly stick and likely did not expect it to stick as long as it has.

However, life is not always a smooth path or simple. The desire to engage again has come up at times over the years. One of those times is recently over the past few weeks. I have had some really intense desires and vivid imagery pushing me to want to engage again. It is hard to acknowledge and wrestle with these thoughts and desires after all these years. I'm learning that my current phase of life is possibly contributing to these thoughts and desires coming back up again. I am truly alone for maybe the first time in my life (I'm 36, almost 37) in the sense that I am only responsible for myself and not anyone else, either actually responsible or just feel that I was responsible for them. When I actively engaged, taking care of my wounds was part of my routine/ritual that brought me comfort. Now that I have no one else to take care of or who could take care of me, having new wounds would be a backdoor/kind of backwards way to take care of myself. Or at least this is the what my therapist and I have come up with so far.

I don't share this to discourage anyone that they could end up struggling with this for life, but to share a realistic picture of life after actively engaging ends. It makes sense that when life gets hard we want to cope how we know, regardless of what those methods were. For myself, I tend to lean toward destructive coping methods and have struggled to find other ways that are not destructive but bring the same level of relief or comfort. Its a learning process and I'm still discovering myself and what works for me.

Thanks for reading and much love to all! 💖💖

@cheerfulKiwi1776

I have been clean for 27 days and it is honestly pretty easy now because I don't have dysmorphia towards my body. Learning to love it how God made it rather than changing his creation.