Recovery Month: Post Recovery: Share Your Story!
Hey Everybody! 💜
Its September, which means its recovery month. So we want to hear your recovery stories here! We want to celebrate everyone who is on the road to recovery, or who has recovered, or if you have a plan to recover this month and how youre going to do it!
Do you have a recovery story you would like to share? Comment down below! (Please bare in mind that some individuals are not ready to recover right now, and this can be a very sensitive topic. So please think carefully before commenting and if you think it could be triggering towards some individuals, please put a trigger warning on the top of your story!!)
Thank you for all your stories and congrats on recovering or being on the road to recovery or thinking about recovering this month! We cant wait to read your stories below. 
This may be triggering for some people!
Hey everyone. My name (or nickname, I suppose) is G. You might have seen me floating around a bunch of other posts and forums in the area of self-harm. I'm actually kind of proud of how active I've been in the community. Anyway, I decided to share my story, and hopefully it helps some of you.
As of today, I've been clean for 4 weeks, 2 days, but obviously it wasn't always that way. I started cutting about March this year. When I started, it was just once, but slowly I formed a habit. I would sit in class, fighting off the addiction to give me a little twinge of pain, just to tide me over until my next big hit. I guess you could say I was an addict, and I reached that point very quickly. It must have only taken two weeks for me to be addicted to the act of cutting.
This really surprised me. About two years ago, I started the practice of punching myself. I never considered that as self-harm until I looked into it not that long ago. I literally beat myself up until I was covered in bruises. Looking back, the natural progression of that was what happened. Eventually I got used to the pain. I needed more, and that was when I got out my scissors for the first time.
As mentioned earlier, my journey of self-harm was very quick. By June this year I realized that I needed to stop. I did my research, and I really tried. There became a pattern of about two weeks between each relapse. It became harder and harder to push through, but I formed new habits. Slowly I taught myself to draw or write on myself whenever I felt an urge, and that worked for a good while.
My most recent relapse was of a similar addictive nature. I was terrified of myself, and could see myself becoming a zombie. I was driven by the pain, which was quite scary. It's been a tough road, but this time around, I have learned to have more than one coping mechanism. I need to do a blend of different things to solve different situations. Sometimes I come onto 7 Cups, sometimes I write or draw, and sometimes I learn something new!
I'm still not perfect. I have urges about twice a week, but I also know how to distract myself until those urges go away. I haven't actually talked to a professional about any of this either, which is the next step that I would like to take this month. I want to learn to let myself go slowly on the challenging path that is recovery, and I think it's time for me to go to a real life therapist.
I wish all of you luck in your journeys this month, and for the rest of the year. I hope that you are all doing well, and I look forward to maybe reading some of your stories!