My Experience with Self Harm
Ever since I first started it has become almost like an addiction. I try finding other methods to cope or manage my feelings, but I often find myself sporadically hitting myself, leading me to cut myself. I find that it is hard for me to turn to any other method of coping because it seems that it is the only thing that immediately calms me. I’ve tried stopping so many times now, but once something is upsetting me and i dont know what else to do, i go back to my old habits.
My story was quite similar. I had tried so many coping alternatives, some of them working none at all and some working for only a bit. In the end, I always went back to sh.
TW: intrusive thoughts
The alternative that kept me the longest before I went back was the butterfly method. I imagined that every butterfly I drew on my skin was someone I loved and that if I cut it, it would be like cutting their skin. I think it may of been because of my OCD that it actually lasted about a month. My OCD made me get these thoughts that if I hurt myself anywhere, that that everyone I drew on would experience something tragic. I was so terrified of that happening, so I eventually just stopped redrawing them. After the drawings faded, I went right back into the habit, but at least I stopped for a decent amount of time even though it did more harm than before.
TW: sh, little descriptive
I am currently 116 days clean, which is a huge achievement for me. Most I have been since I remember starting. What happend was that sh was all of a sudden just not giving me what I needed. I kept going deeper and deeper, but At one point, it was really tough to go even farther and I kept getting so frustrated. The tools I was using just weren't sharp enough. I started choking myself after that. I found out after a few times of doing that, that it can cause serious medical problems. I didn't really care about that for myself, but I was worried of how that might affect my family. I did it a few more times before I completely stopped.
In conclusion, no coping method actually helped me, it just slowly came to me of how doing this made me feel worse than I did before. For a while, I still had serious urges, but managed to fight them. After a bit, they became less frequent, but I still get them from time to time. Instead of sh, I've just been feeling it, sitting on the floor feeling whatever is there, or nothing at all if that's it. Drawing out scenes of what I feel helps sometimes too.
No matter what step you are on right now, I recommend downloading the app Calm Harm. It has a lot of nice features for it, but I mainly use it for the clean streak counter.
Thank you if you read this, it was a little bit of a rant, but I wanted to show you what I was feeling and what I did so that you can use it to help yourself.
I hope you have a wonderful day, cause you got this! I know you can do it, and I hope you are feeling cleaner and better soon.
