This blog post is going to be all about my experience with self harm, how and why I begun self harm and the different ways in which I did it. Massive trigger warning on this post, I'm not going to put any photos up because I think that wouldn't be helpful to anyone, even though I have a load, but I am going to go into detail about this topic, so if you think it's going to trigger you, please don't read this, I know how hard it can be reading something about self harm.
The first time I experienced what it was like to cut your skin, not on purpose, but my first experience of it was when I was 11 years old. I was shaving my legs and my hand slipped and I cut myself on the razor. I was crying at the time and I remember the feeling of shock, but then oddly enjoying it. I watched the blood drip down my leg and I got this weird sort of satisfaction from it.
The next time I self harmed properly was when I was 15 years old. There was something bad going on with the boy I was seeing at the time, and I had a huge argument with my mother because my brother bullied me. I was doing GCSE Textiles at the time, and there's this thing called an unpicker which you use to break thread if you've made a mistake. I took that and cut two long cuts into my arm. It didn't bleed, but I just remember it being so sore and hurting so much, almost a little like a burn. I didn't care about how much pain I was in, it was just a distraction from what I was feeling at the time. I covered it up for a week or so while it healed, I didn't want anyone to know what I had done.
I thought it would be a one off and that I would never do it again, but that wasn't the case. I got into a really low mood a little while later and I cut again with the unpicker but more times and deeper. It bled and I got some satisfaction from the fact it bled, I watched it roll down my arm and it was enjoyable for me. I promised myself I would never do it again though and that it was just a silly mistake. How wrong I was.
Within a month, I had become addicted to self harm. I would cut every single day, I took apart pencil sharpeners and used the blades from that, I would buy pencil sharpeners with the intention of only using them for self harm. I had stashes of blades all over my room, I took a blade to school with my in my blazer, just in case I had the urge to do it in school and sometimes I would go to the toilet during a lesson and cut. I would also burn myself sometimes, it wasn't my most common form of self harm, I was mainly a cutter, burning had a different sensation for me.
Only one person knew when I first started self harming and that was the guy I was sort of seeing at the time. He eventually told our favourite drama teacher and she got me counselling at school. At my first session she realised how suicidal I was and called the Deputy Head in, my mum was called into school and I had to explain everything to her. We went to the doctors and I had to show her my self harm scars, I could see my mum wincing in the corner of my eye, the sad thing was it wasn't that bad at the time for my standards. I was referred to CAMHs, (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) but it didn't get better as soon as I went there. If anything it got worse for a little bit. All of my blades got taken away, but I got new ones the next day so it didn't really make a difference.
It was really hard for me to open up and talk about everything that had been bothering me, my counsellor Julia, was amazing and made me feel very comfortable and safe with her. We talked about some pretty traumatic things and I found it so difficult to talk about it all. Talking about it then made me think about all the horrile things going on in my head which then cause me to self harm when I was by myself. She would ask me every single week if I had self harmed, and most of the time I lied and said no because I felt too ashamed which looking back was silly because she's use to that sort of thing.
People at school were starting to notice as well, they would grab my arm and I would wince or say ouch, I had to wear shorts in some PE lessons and they would see the scars on my legs. I would just tell them it was cat scratched but they all knew it wasn't. They just felt awkward if they pushed the subject further. I did confide in my close friends about it though and they were very concerned with it.
At the time I didn't really see anything wrong with it. I just wanted to feel something rather than nothing, I wanted to get rid of the emotional pain but physically hurting. It did work, but it was so destructive. Sometimes I would carve horrible words into my skin, thing people had said to me before, things like slut, fat, die, and I essentially scarred myself for life with those words. But I felt like I needed to do it and I enjoyed it at the time even though afterwards I would feel so awful.
I think the time that I realised I needed to stop was when I cut four times on my upper arm. The blood ran all the way down my arm, and it bled for hours and I mean hours, my blood just wouldn't clot for some reason. I thought I would have to go to hospital and get it stitched up or something. Luckily it eventually stopped and that's when I realised I had a problem. It was the first time I really admitted to myself that I needed to get better and beat this addiction. Before, I didn't realise that I was doing anything wrong so I didn't see the need to stop. These cuts were the turning point for me.
It was a huge fight, one that I'm still fighting. But gradually, with the help of Julia, and with me being more honest with myself, the times that I cut began to have more time in between. I started self harming properly when I was 15 and I stopped doing it all the time by the time I was about 17. I still had moments of weakness but it was no where near as bad as it had been.
I was clean for about a year, then I came to uni and had a panic attack on a bus, I scratched the skin off my fingers. When I went home, I asked all of my friends to take away anything sharp in my room, but they forgot to take my knifes out, which I didn't realise for about an hour. So I self harmed again and for a month or so, I was back to self harming. I didn't get the same satisfaction out of it that I had done previously so I stopped again.
The last time I self harmed was 9th April 2016. I am not proud of it. But it happened.
The way I look at it now, it's probably something that will always be in my life and it's something I will never be able to escape from. For several different reasons. Every time I'm naked I see the scars I put on myself, I look at my legs and see the words I carved into my body, I scarred myself and did it all to myself. Every time I have a new partner I have to explain that I'm an ex self harmer, because the scars are so visible. I'm always asked about my scars on my upper arm because they're raised and so obvious. The thing I'm most upset about is that if I ever have children I would have to explain to them why their mother felt the need to hurt herself. That breaks my heart quite a lot. It's the hardest thing about all of this. It almost makes me not want to be a mother so I don't ever have to have that conversation.
Self harm, in any form, is not okay. If you are self harming you do need to get help. I'm still struggling with the addiction of it right now, I am living proof of what can happen. I don't want anyone to look at their body and hate the scars they put on their own body. I will probably do another blog post about methods to deal with self harm later on, but right I feel like I've written enough. This is my own personal experience with it and everyone's experience with it is completely different. Honestly, if you are struggling with self harm, you need to get some help so you can eventually stop. It's not a healthy behaviour, it's not something to be ashamed of, but it's not something you want to be doing at all.
Stay awesome.
The next time I self harmed properly was when I was 15 years old. There was something bad going on with the boy I was seeing at the time, and I had a huge argument with my mother because my brother bullied me. I was doing GCSE Textiles at the time, and there's this thing called an unpicker which you use to break thread if you've made a mistake. I took that and cut two long cuts into my arm. It didn't bleed, but I just remember it being so sore and hurting so much, almost a little like a burn. I didn't care about how much pain I was in, it was just a distraction from what I was feeling at the time. I covered it up for a week or so while it healed, I didn't want anyone to know what I had done.
I thought it would be a one off and that I would never do it again, but that wasn't the case. I got into a really low mood a little while later and I cut again with the unpicker but more times and deeper. It bled and I got some satisfaction from the fact it bled, I watched it roll down my arm and it was enjoyable for me. I promised myself I would never do it again though and that it was just a silly mistake. How wrong I was.
Within a month, I had become addicted to self harm. I would cut every single day, I took apart pencil sharpeners and used the blades from that, I would buy pencil sharpeners with the intention of only using them for self harm. I had stashes of blades all over my room, I took a blade to school with my in my blazer, just in case I had the urge to do it in school and sometimes I would go to the toilet during a lesson and cut. I would also burn myself sometimes, it wasn't my most common form of self harm, I was mainly a cutter, burning had a different sensation for me.
Only one person knew when I first started self harming and that was the guy I was sort of seeing at the time. He eventually told our favourite drama teacher and she got me counselling at school. At my first session she realised how suicidal I was and called the Deputy Head in, my mum was called into school and I had to explain everything to her. We went to the doctors and I had to show her my self harm scars, I could see my mum wincing in the corner of my eye, the sad thing was it wasn't that bad at the time for my standards. I was referred to CAMHs, (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) but it didn't get better as soon as I went there. If anything it got worse for a little bit. All of my blades got taken away, but I got new ones the next day so it didn't really make a difference.
It was really hard for me to open up and talk about everything that had been bothering me, my counsellor Julia, was amazing and made me feel very comfortable and safe with her. We talked about some pretty traumatic things and I found it so difficult to talk about it all. Talking about it then made me think about all the horrile things going on in my head which then cause me to self harm when I was by myself. She would ask me every single week if I had self harmed, and most of the time I lied and said no because I felt too ashamed which looking back was silly because she's use to that sort of thing.
People at school were starting to notice as well, they would grab my arm and I would wince or say ouch, I had to wear shorts in some PE lessons and they would see the scars on my legs. I would just tell them it was cat scratched but they all knew it wasn't. They just felt awkward if they pushed the subject further. I did confide in my close friends about it though and they were very concerned with it.
At the time I didn't really see anything wrong with it. I just wanted to feel something rather than nothing, I wanted to get rid of the emotional pain but physically hurting. It did work, but it was so destructive. Sometimes I would carve horrible words into my skin, thing people had said to me before, things like slut, fat, die, and I essentially scarred myself for life with those words. But I felt like I needed to do it and I enjoyed it at the time even though afterwards I would feel so awful.
I think the time that I realised I needed to stop was when I cut four times on my upper arm. The blood ran all the way down my arm, and it bled for hours and I mean hours, my blood just wouldn't clot for some reason. I thought I would have to go to hospital and get it stitched up or something. Luckily it eventually stopped and that's when I realised I had a problem. It was the first time I really admitted to myself that I needed to get better and beat this addiction. Before, I didn't realise that I was doing anything wrong so I didn't see the need to stop. These cuts were the turning point for me.
It was a huge fight, one that I'm still fighting. But gradually, with the help of Julia, and with me being more honest with myself, the times that I cut began to have more time in between. I started self harming properly when I was 15 and I stopped doing it all the time by the time I was about 17. I still had moments of weakness but it was no where near as bad as it had been.
I was clean for about a year, then I came to uni and had a panic attack on a bus, I scratched the skin off my fingers. When I went home, I asked all of my friends to take away anything sharp in my room, but they forgot to take my knifes out, which I didn't realise for about an hour. So I self harmed again and for a month or so, I was back to self harming. I didn't get the same satisfaction out of it that I had done previously so I stopped again.
The last time I self harmed was 9th April 2016. I am not proud of it. But it happened.
The way I look at it now, it's probably something that will always be in my life and it's something I will never be able to escape from. For several different reasons. Every time I'm naked I see the scars I put on myself, I look at my legs and see the words I carved into my body, I scarred myself and did it all to myself. Every time I have a new partner I have to explain that I'm an ex self harmer, because the scars are so visible. I'm always asked about my scars on my upper arm because they're raised and so obvious. The thing I'm most upset about is that if I ever have children I would have to explain to them why their mother felt the need to hurt herself. That breaks my heart quite a lot. It's the hardest thing about all of this. It almost makes me not want to be a mother so I don't ever have to have that conversation.
Self harm, in any form, is not okay. If you are self harming you do need to get help. I'm still struggling with the addiction of it right now, I am living proof of what can happen. I don't want anyone to look at their body and hate the scars they put on their own body. I will probably do another blog post about methods to deal with self harm later on, but right I feel like I've written enough. This is my own personal experience with it and everyone's experience with it is completely different. Honestly, if you are struggling with self harm, you need to get some help so you can eventually stop. It's not a healthy behaviour, it's not something to be ashamed of, but it's not something you want to be doing at all.
Stay awesome.
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