I Want to Talk About My Battle With Self-Harm

First things first: this post will contain details about self-harm. I’m not intending to trigger anyone. So if you’re planning on reading this, make sure you’re in a safe place. I’ll try to limit the details to the absolutely necessary amount.

I don’t talk about this subject very often, obviously it’s not something to be proud of. To be honest, I hate to confirm stereotypes but I have to. I was a teenager when I started self-harming. I was 16 years old when I first hurt myself on purpose.

I was definitely influenced by my hormones but there was much more that made me get to this point. I still hate it when people say “when you grow up, your feelings get easier” because it makes me feel like my feelings are invalid, like I should not take them seriously. Well, I guess we all heard those comments. And for some people it, indeed, works like that. But some people had to deal with adult situations and that causes adult feelings. They won’t go away after your teenage years.

So if you ever felt hurt because people don’t take your feelings serious, mind these words: your feelings are ALWAYS valid! If they came from a mature problem, its normal they won’t leave when your hormones are settling again.

My best friend’s sister had self-harmed herself a couple of times, she really had a hard time and didn’t know how to cope any different. My friend told me she couldn’t understand why her sister did that, what it takes to get to the point to intentionally hurt yourself. I told her that she just wanted to stop the pain of her soul. She nodded but still she couldn’t get her mind to it.

After this conversation, I realized that I understood why someone would self-harm. And I also realized that wasn’t necessary a good thing. At the time I was 14 years old and not self-harming.

Two years later, I came to the point where I did the most stupid thing in my life. I was under the shower and I was feeling really bad. My abusive dad just died and my grandpa just died as well. My mom and brother had a hard time because of the death of my grandfather. I didn’t really grieve about it; it only made me upset because my family was.

While standing under the shower, I felt like no one saw my pain, like I had no voice, like I wasn’t allowed to have a voice. At that point I just wanted to see the chaos that was going on in my head. I was angry, sad, confused, and frustrated because I couldn’t snap out of the feeling.

I started harming myself in a “harmless” way. I scratched myself with my finger nail. My arm looked like a battlefield and that was exactly what my head felt like at the time.

When I looked at my arm, I was shocked but relieved. Somehow I decided to do this more often because it made me feel relieved for a little while.  Of course I was ashamed and I got dressed with long-sleeved pajamas. I was releasing my anger and chaos in something visible.

I soon noticed the effect worked better when I scratched deeper. It had a lot of pros and at that point I didn’t see the cons. Somehow it escalated quickly. I scratched myself at least twice a day because the red stripes didn’t lasts as long as I would like to. Sometimes I scratched so hard there was a little bit of blood and a crust appeared. I didn’t see the problem and I even liked it, because the visual aspect would last longer. I could see the chaos even longer. So for me it became a goal to get a crust. Now I understand what I should have done instead, but back then I didn’t.

At one point, my mother and brother had a bit of an argument. I was in the middle of the war zone and I decided to space out. I used my dinner knife and made “zebra stripes” on my arm. It really didn’t hurt and I thought it looked nice. I just gently let the knife cross my skin. Nothing less, nothing more.

After that evening, I saw more crusts on my skin than when I really tried with scratching. For me it was clear. I wanted to see chaos on my skin and the pain wasn’t necessary for me. What I did with the knife didn’t even hurt so for me (at the time) it only brought positive things.  

When I had a really had time my motive to self-harm became more complex. Sometimes I really wanted to feel the pain, sometimes I wanted to punish myself and sometimes, I needed a reason to be kind to myself. So the pain became an important element of my self-harm. I didn’t like the pain, but more pain meant more damage, and more damage meant better long-term effects. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

At that point I wasn’t thinking straight at all. I wasn’t in recovery or anything like that, I only had destructive thoughts. So because of all the “positive” sides, I got (again) more extreme. I started to use razor knives. We all know those are literally razor sharp so I harmed myself more than ever before.

After a little while, I started to see the scars I’d made. I realized people could ask questions about them. I really wasn’t open about my self-harm and it slowly became clear my self-harm was indeed a problem. Besides that, it was almost summer and my wounds and fresh scars would be more visible. I didn’t want to get confronted with my bad habit, so I tried to find a solution. For most people, the solution would be clear:, stop self-harming, but for me that was not an option. My solution was a different form of self-harm. I started to bruise myself. It wasn’t as noticeable as cutting.

To be honest, it hurt so much! I don’t get bruised easily so I had to really work hard and it had a minimal effect. For me, it was a rational decision and that doesn’t make it any easier.

As you noticed, my self-harm went through many phases. Now I’m in a much safer place and I’d like to share that in another post. Self-harm is a taboo and that needs to change. When you self-harm, you’re not a dangerous person. You are hurting and you deserve support. Just make sure you’re keeping your wounds clean and make sure someone knows about your struggle. So if it goes wrong, you don’t have to explain but you can act fast.

Please be safe and kind to yourself!

~written by Namasté allday~